Pagalavan's Avatar

Well, the Minister himself has finally acknowledged that there will be surplus of doctors soon (please read the 2nd last sentence) but of course, he claim that the moratorium is to prevent the surplus. However, as I have said before, I don’t think the moratorium is going to make any difference in preventing surplus of doctors in 5 years time. We already have about 4000 new doctors coming into the market last year. Remember, almost 50% on the 30 medical schools in the country have not even started to produce their graduates! Even if each produces 150 students , almost 4500 students will be graduating locally by 2015 but I am sure the number will be much higher as some public universities are already producing more than 200 students per year.

 

This news also confirms that you can do medicine wherever, including African, South American or eastern european countries and the government is not bothered! Getting NOC is a joke anyway. Some stupid clerk sitting in the MOHE will decide on the NOC! BUT what is for sure will be the Medical Licensing Exam(MQE) that every overseas graduate will have to pass before being eligible to be registered as a doctor. This is where a major problem will occur with substandard students may not even be able to get a job/practise as a doctor. I just hope that the MQE will be standardised and transparent enough. I won’t mind being one of the examiner thou!

 

However, I also feel that MMC need to be more strict on the local medical schools. If not I would prefer a similar exam for ALL local private and public medical graduates. I hope MMC will have more say and not to be a toothless tiger! One interesting thing that I recently noticed via the MMC website is the fact that Cyberjaya Medical University was derecognised by MMC as of 31/12/2010 based on the latest list dated 07/02/2011 (http://mmc.gov.my/v1/docs/Jadual%20Kedua%2011-02-07_Website.pdf). I was informed that the students were told that they have to sit for MQE  upon graduation if MMC do not reverse the decision by then!! I am sure more decisions like this will appear if a proper auditing is conducted on various medical schools in the country. Many of these medical schools are totally dependent on Burmese lecturers who don’t do any clinical work and part-time lecturers who just come for tutorials etc .

 

 

Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai said one of the amendments would be the nullification of the Second Schedule which lists all the 375 recognised medical institutions.

Under this approach, the students would be able to choose the institutions of their choice, provided they obtain the “No Objection” certificate before hand from the Ministry of Higher Education, he said.

“After graduation, the students will have to sit for the Licensing Examination to determine their ability to function as quality and competent doctors,” he said when replying to a question from Dr Tan Seng Giaw (DAP-Kepong).

Liow said that students who passed the examination would be eligible to register with the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) to serve as doctors in the country.

“It cannot be denied that it is difficult to conduct regular monitoring of the quality of medical studies by institutions abroad in view of the geographical and logistical factors and prohibitive cost involved in sending an evaluation panel overseas,” he said.

Liow said the moratorium on new medical programmes offered at local institutions of higher learning would come into force once it had been approved by parliament.

The moratorium, being worked out by the Ministry of Higher Education with input from relevant government agencies, was necessary to prevent the creation of a surplus of medical graduates, he said.

Liow also said that the number of medical graduands registered with the MMC had grown from 2,527 in 2008 to 3,150 in 2009 and to 3,257 last year.

– Bernama