Only in Malaysia are we afraid of a ‘flood of doctors’

YOURSAY ‘The only fair way is to make all students sit for a common exam.’

Curbs on medical studies to prevent flood of doctors

Vijay47: Since the government has already decided that the intake for medical studies will be limited to 418 students, what purpose would any appeal achieve?

Are you saying that you will miraculously find a place for Ms Ng Yi Ling, the top scorer who was offered a nursing course instead?

In any case, Deputy Education Minister P Kamalanathan, what a wonderful measure "interview results" is (the selection of 418 was also based on interview results). Pardon me, if I don't kiss your hand.

CiViC: Only in Malaysia we are afraid of having more doctors. Why don't the government control the number of political parties and their branches to avoid a flood of politicians. After all, they are good for nothing.

CHKS: I agree that public institutions of higher learning (IPTA) (and private universities or IPTS) should control the number of doctors trained per year. It is not that we are afraid of having more doctors.

The fact is Malaysia is really producing too many house officers (HOs) per year, so much so that there is not enough places and hours of training for these new HOs.

Many hospitals have now opted for shift works for house officers because of "over-supply" of HOs. We need quality, not just quantity.

However, I believe careful consideration should be made before we reject any top scorers just on the basis of interviews.

If we reject them just because of the interviews, especially the way they talk and impress the interviewers, it is not fair. There could be a lot biases against certain candidates. Studies have also shown that the performance during interviews does not reflect the medical students' academic performance later on.

The reason why there is still a shortage of doctors in government hospitals is because of greener pastures in the private clinics and medical centres. As long as we don't stop the leakages from the other end, no matter how many produced, it will not be enough.

But to stop the leakage means higher pay for the doctors. Higher pay for doctors in government sector means higher charges by the patients; and higher budget to the health sector, which means more money being forked out by taxpayers.

Pemerhati: The only fair way to select the best students for medical course is to make all of them sit for a common examination and then select the 418 who score the highest marks.

Admission through interviews are likely to be very subjective and since the interviewers are likely to be National Civics Bureau (BTN) indoctrinated officers and there is a strong possibility that these will not be fairly conducted.

With the present system of selecting medical students, the country is likely to continue to have a lot of third-rate doctors coming through the matriculation stream.

2Kali5: So long as parents and others have the yesteryears' mentality that being a doctor is prestigious and attracts good income, rather than the individual's love for the profession, then the problem will persist.

Society's myopic views and attitude will need to be changed if we want to progress into a First World country. There are many instances where students studying medicine abroad subsequently got disillusioned and changed courses midway.

Anonymous_1391570393: This is outright stupidity to curb the number of doctors. As the population grows, so will the demand for doctors. Go to any government hospital and you will see that we are short of doctors.

Guns 'n' Roses: Dear Anonymous_1391570393, which government hospital have you gone to where you saw a shortage of doctors? Please name me one, just one. All the government hospitals are literally 'crawling' with house officers, also known as housemen, i.e., trainee doctors.

These are fresh medical graduates from all over the world doing their compulsory two-year housemanship. I deal with tens of them everyday in my department.

And why is there such 'overcrowding'? This is mostly due to the fact that the government does not have adequate hospitals to train these young graduates.

And I dare say the poor quality of doctors we produce is highly worrying. After their housemanship, most of them will be posted as medical officers to the Klinik Kesihatan (KK) and district hospitals.

I dare say I have encountered many such doctors to whom I'll never send my family members and loved ones to seek medical treatment from. By the way, this is my 25th year as a faithful government doctor.

Anonymous_1396226334: A flood of doctors? Are you serious? You can say that our higher educational institutions can only cater for such a limited numbers per intake to keep the standard high, but seriously, fear of too many doctors?

Also, do not stereotype doctors as only those who treat patient, we need doctors for medical research as well.

Telestai!: What many people don't understand is not all Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) 4.0 students are exceptionally bright.

Thanks to BN, the standard of education has dropped so much but yet the scoring remains. Hence there are many 4.0 students walking around and it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I believe the lowering of the standards was intentional and the Unit Pusat Universiti (UPU) now struggles to pick the really good ones for top courses. Hence they develop a scoring system that takes into account extracurricular activities in addition to academic performance.

Vasudevan: Hello, you can complain until the cows (pun intended on you know who) come home. This story is spun and re-spun over and over year after year. People just do not understand - this is Engineering 101. Get over it.

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