I don't know about you guys but there will come a time when there will be surplusses of doctors at the rate of how things are going on lately. Already there are hundreds of medical colleges prouting up all over in Malaysia. With the dubious teaching staffs available to teach these young medical students, i am afraid the quality of medical grads in time to come will suffer in term of quality.

I have seen many of these interns in our local hospitals undergoing training in housemanship. Some can't even present their case in a proper manner much less discuss specific illness in an interligent manner which is quite sad really. It has been projected that Malaysia will swarmed by at least 6-7 thousands of these doctors in the coming years making compulsory services redundance. We may decry the lack of doctors at the moment but at what we will see later on will be really shocking. Think about it, with the abolition of compulsory services, most of these doctors will be pushed into private services like GPs which might be good news for some as there will be lots of GPs to choose from albeit inexperience ones. Government services will be seen as gold then.

I urge the MMC to restrict the issuing of licences to all and sundry to open medical colleges in order to save guard quality in this profession for our sake.

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HEAVEN IS SO REAL
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

surpluss good mah ! can be more competitive, then a by- pass will have to click to the web site for offer RM9.90 ,cancer stage 1 RM6.90 and cancer Stage 4 RM69.90 and pay by credit card can redeem points to change for Vit pills or packet herbal tea and lucky draw for first price is free coffin

Did you say over 100 Medical Colleges?

Where?

I have been thinking about the same thing. It started with more and more nursing courses.

Surplus in terms of economics might seem good. But massification of education forces quality down.

Russia might be an appropriate example. Almost everyone is a doctor but their skills are old-school from what I heard.

I have been thinking about the US institution I have my surgery at, the House Ear Institute. They have residency and fellowship programs where doctors can come in to work and learn with the surgeons. The last time I was there, a young Asian Chinese doctor named Adeline was learning from my surgeon Dr. Lekovic. She helped him monitor me in the ward and later removed my staples that held my wound shut too.

I was thinking, if our government would send students to learn at HEI, that will benefit mant NF patients in Malaysia.

If I am not mistaken, students receive a stippend as fellows and residents. But the student needs to afford his or her own living expenses - That's where our government can support them.

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www.yvonnefoong.com

You echo my sentiment exactly. Soon we might become like another India or the Philippine where doctors change profession to nurses because almost everyone is a doctors it seems.

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HEAVEN IS SO REAL
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

Sigh....I reckon they should all be sent to a western country for 5 years ,if they still survive without being sued for negligence, then that is the quality we want in Malaysia.
Otherwise I can just print the certicates at home and give to them, it will be free..what-lah!

That is as a figure of speech. I do not have the number but we are looking at increasingly bad figure. What I am getting at is the training of the potential grads and not the number. In UMS, most of the medical lecturers are Burmese who have difficulty in conversing in English. Care to see what will happen to our future grads?

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HEAVEN IS SO REAL
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

My biggest worry is how many of these medical undergrds really want to be doctors. Imagine the kind of doctor they become if they join the profession due to parental pressure, imagined glamour etc.? To be a good doctor needs DEDICATION. Let me relate this, I was with my hubby at the Russian Embasssy to make his business visa. There were quite a number of medical students going to Russia making their student visa there. Nearly all of them were giggling kids who cannot understand repeated instructions from the very patient lady at the reception explaining the documents and procedures necessary ( and their exam results from wht I saw was horrible ). What takes the cake was there was this couple (parents) getting all frazzled coz their son missed the 1st week of his final year (the semester has already started)as his documentation are not in order - where is their son? Was he at the embassy? NO! HE was at home SLEEPING! While his parents are there sweating buckets trying to do his visa! Do you think he is interested at all, or his parents are the ones who want a doc in the family?

I think doctors should be forced to have an offical notice in their office for at least their first 5 years after qualifying that states their position in their final exams.

Who wants a doctor that was at the bottom of his class?

I am glad this topic came up. Among the medical fraternity it is well known that we are going to have a surplus of doctors soon. And that the quality of new doctors and specialists are gradually going down the drain. Last year about 3500 housemen joined the Ministry of Health. This year the number is expected to exceed 4000. Bear in mind that there are a few medical colleges which have started operations but have not produced any graduates yet (it takes 5 years; half-baked or not). There are also a few which have been given approval to start but which have not actually done so yet. So I expect in 10 years time the number of new doctors will be more than 5000 a year.

At the moment, the govt hospitals accepting/training housemen are already unable to cope. Hospitals which used to have a total of 40+ housemen at any one time now have that number in one department alone. There are sometimes not enough admissions in one day to allocate one patient to each housemen. Consultants probably would not notice if any one of them disappears for the day!

Per-capita; we have the largest number of medical schools in the world. There must be huge profits to be made in medical education; hence everybody is jumping into it. Even a college which made its reputation turning out large numbers of nurses of dubious quality is also starting a medical course. UTAR is about to start. The military (National Defence University) is also going to start although that is entirely a different story as they need to fill their manpower needs.

The MMC which is supposed to govern the quality of medical courses is dominated by govt nominees, so any college approved by the govt is almost automatically given the MMC stamp as well.

With the mushrooming of medical colleges, where are the teaching staff coming from. Most basic science lecturers would come from countries like Indonesia, Burma, India while the clinical departments would be staffed by part-timers from the government "teaching hospitals" that these colleges are affiliated to. These are specialists/consultants who take on additional teaching duties on top of their routine service work. Most hospitals are not really designed for teaching of medical students. So how to have quality teaching? Your guess is as good as mine.

So what do the public do? I have no answers.

Well, every Malaysian student after getting 10+ As in SPM wants to be a doctor, so with SPM examinations standard getting "easier" since more than 100+ score straight As - we will have more students per year who wants to be doctors .... Strange, when we compare against other countries, where most top students DO NOT Necesarily wants to be a doctor, hence all fields and sectors get their fair share of "brains" and progress but not in LOP-SIDED Boleh !!!! SO, theoretically, we get "SMART" doctors but sadly, half-past-six everything else and that is also kind of a screw-up in Msian education system and eventually, the society and job-market make-up if you ask me !!

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Everyday is a good day for GOOD FOOD and a GOOD LAUGH

Let me correct a myth about doctoring. You don't need to be SMART to be a good doctor. You need to have lots of patient, dedication, long suffering, love for humanity, sacrificial love for human and just enough SMART to pull through as a good doctor. This myth is also the one that produce all this lop sided admission to medical colleges in the misguided sense that a medical career is an automatic path to glory and riches. Heck, if I want to be rich I might as well do business or join the bank or something. My cousin is in the banking sector and earning 3-4 times better than me in the government sector. Unless you are hunkering in for the long haul in your journey being doctor, you are gonna be disillusion with the whole mirage of a better life later on.

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HEAVEN IS SO REAL
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

At one of the local colleges I used to attend, lecturers compromised their teaching quality, the depth of their teachings and exam questions, so that students will achieve higher grades and bring up the number of As.

Eventually, the college was awarded University College status.

I got tired of the trend. Since I am also late-deafened and trying to adjust in a classroom with mostly hearing students, the effects of such behaviors coming from lecturers was stressful to me.

The lecturers were like straws and grass being blown by the wind. They adapt not to the student's understanding or coping ability but to what would make the students get As.

As such, I have switched to studying independently through the same university in Iowa insteadf of going through a local college.

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www.yvonnefoong.com

When I was in Lower Six. I got admitted into the Science Stream which were covering Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Additional Maths etc...It was dry and boring (although I was from the Science Stream during Forms 4 and 5). So I switched to the Arts Stream, Mum went bonkers and scolded me for 3 days and 3 nights... about how people trying to be engineers and doctors and you just threw it all away....

I silenced her finally with one sentence... "Mum, I had to make a choice. Not everyone can be or want to be a doctor. I can be a doctor but I do not want to be a doctor, I will not be a happy man. Do you want a sad doctor in the house or a happy banker?" The ear-shattering scoldings stopped.

p.s. why then is the dowry for a Ceylonese doctor so much more than a Ceylonese banker, Bugbear?

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"Far Better It Is To Dare Mighty Things Than To Take Rank With Those Poor Timid Spirits Who Know Neither Victory Nor Defeat" - Theodore Roosevelt (1899)

Again, it is human perception that doctors are kind hearted while the bankers are greedy leeches. How are you feeling sentinel?

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HEAVEN IS SO REAL
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”