Concern over Russia and Ukraine Med Schools
posted in - Education, - Palmdoc |Patdave has made a provocative post in the MMR Student Forums entitled Concern over Russia and Ukraine Med Schools (registration in the MMR required to view posts)
I have heard of a HO working in a public hospital in the Klang Valley, a graduate from a Ukranian medical school, who does not know even how to clerk a patient properly or take blood samples. I do not know how representative this HO is of Russian and Ukranian graduates in general. I am sure there are fine Russian medical schools but the concern is the overall quality of the training Malaysian students coming from the region. It may be suspect if the students are weak and somehow get into medical school despite poor grades. On top of that the weak students have to master a foreign language so I can’t imagine how such weak students can even get through medical school.
These weak HOs will at best be “retained” for an extended period of Housemanship. The trouble is, they are already “in the system”. The “system” permits sub-standard medical graduates (no matter from which medical school - local or foreign) to be registerable, as long as they come from a recognised medical school or if they pass the Unscheduled Examination. Perhaps indeed it is high time we had a Common qualifying exam for all?
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August 24th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Imagine,if you are yourself a mdical graduate from russia.It is not necessary that all the doctors from Russia are incompetent.However, there will be some good and some bad. Even, that’s happens in every country.
In conlusion, I know, some best doctors Russian’s gradute, working in the UK and leading various departments. Eventhough my self is graduated from pakistan, a British citizen and working in the uk at present.
July 29th, 2008 at 2:06 am
hi, i felt that only Indians studying in russia are treated badly by doctors in India. I would like to say none of you can understand the pain each student. Most of doctors working in India or Malaysia can never have those can have the talents and confidence those who study in Russia. Yes, maybe some have not studied so it doesnt mean that all do not study.Most of us are determined to become doctor but have no much money to study in india or Malaysia.if you are so concerned thst your country medical students should be able to become good doctors then help us. Take the initiative to help us.Will any one of you do it? No none of you…You have words to discourage us, insult us? How many of you have said to a medical student from Russia to get some practical knowledge in your hospital? How many of you in Medical councils think that you can help us to get some good training of two years in governmant hospitals instead of keeping exam which is a kind of harrassement.Even after studying for 7 years in a country like Russia our own country hinders us to become good doctors.if you were good doctors you would be helping us not discouraging us.
Very few doctors I have seen who understand me and encourage me.there are time i was insulted just because I was studying in Russia.But i will go ahead and become some day a good Doctor. All the best to all who are doing medicine in Russian, Belarus, Ukraine ets……..If our own ppl cant help us…the Creator,our God is with us. God bless…
November 29th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
I think regardless of where a person graduates from, it’s ultimately a very personal thing. No one will choose to endure the hardship of med school just for the fun of it. In the end, it’s a person’s work, heart and attitude that will determine how ‘good’ a person is. Once upon a time, Manipal grads were looked down upon too. Not anymore. I’m proud to be a Manipal product. Those days I had to endure scorn from people too. They think Indian grads are lousy. I refused to listen nor take it to heart.Of course there are black sheep. Not one med school in this world can boast of not having any bad apples. So all you peeps in foreign med schools, work hard, study hard, gain the knowledge, do your best and come back and be your best and give your best. There will always be critics, but there will also always be people who will help you along and guide you. Cheers!
November 29th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
No one will understand, no matter how much we explain.
and nobody even thinks of going to RUssia for a tour. It’s like “sebab setitik nila, rosak susu sebelanga” and “katak di bawah tempurung” (no offense intended).
We just have to do our part and do it well, amidst criticism and dissent.
November 28th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Yes, i agree with what Bie said. Life could be tough in Russia, eventhough
i myself in studying in the capital-Moscow! You feel “sooo not belong
to here”. After six years of such life, when you should be happy going
back to Malaysia, yet what awaits you is the confrontation to be
discriminated by your own Malaysian doctors!
You should understand that, many of us (i should say there are certain
amounts of lousy students here) are good students who did well in
STPM. We came to Russia because we couldn’t enter local uni due to
the reasons known by everyone.
To poordoctor, i understand that to some extent our knowledge is
behind other graduates because they have their own system here and
somemore you had to study everything in Russian which makes it even
tougher. However, next time when you see the Russian graduates, you
should know that they are your fellow Malaysians who are no difference
from other graduates who worked hard in the secondary school and
academic years. We came to Russia because the government has created
a pathway for us who couldn’t get into local uni and whose parents
aren’t so rich to send us to medical schools in english-speaking
countries, so we wouldn’t end up in studying other courses just like
many did before the recognition in 2002.
November 28th, 2007 at 8:04 am
With your previous reply, I must say that you deserve a better respect from me.I understand all the circumstances you’ve mentioned, being a senior consultant, you have the responsibility to make sure the quality of each doctors under you. But I must said that in all medical schools over the world will not produce 100% genuine doctors.The most important is oneself. And because of this, I think you should stop seeing everyone with your bias view. Because if this continues, your “good intention” to make us realize the vision of becoming a doctor will end up de-motivating all the students. And I am sure sometimes even MO or senior doctors will have mistakes.And only one mistake is enough for us to carry the “name” the rest of our life.
And you have no idea how insecure abroad students feel everyday studying “not in Malaysia” because they do not know what is the correct path to choose when they first graduate esp those student in Russia including myself. Being in dilemma asking myself again and again where will I end up working after 2 years? Many abroad students who are luckier will be able to enter good medical school in better countries like UK, Aus or US. After graduating,they will just directly continue working in the country they graduated. But for us, we do not have a choice. We will not be able work in Russia and thus our future path hardest among all.
We can choose to work in Mal, but now we see how the Malaysian doctors look at us and how they de-motivate us. If I were to choose again, I will of course wish for a better medicine school but in terms of financial wise, I guess I can only enter those uni in Russia or Indonesia which are much cheaper. Who wants to study in a country speaks not english, high living expenses, dangerous? I guess if you ask all the Russia students to re-choose, NOBODY wants it. Thus I must ask you to reconsider your bias-view on us. And of course you do not have to understand how we feel because this is not your job,but at least stop commenting on such a forum esp directly shooting on us, those in Russia.We aren’t aliens. We are really studying hard for our degree,and times harder for a russian degree.
And I believe everyone aware of the toughness in medical field.A HO ever shared her feelings to me telling me her life is a dead life and she’d wished so much to jump out from 6th floor. But she knew that HO is a stage where all the doctors have to go through, thus I really hope the MO or senior doctors may help each other BUT of course students play the most important role to work hard for the degree. I believe when there is no theory,one can do nothing practically. All the passion and time given out will reward us one satisfaction. That is the reason why we want to be a doctor
November 27th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I agree that to become doctor, you need not need to be the smartest but you need the passion. But you have to understand that in O&G, the patient demand a very high standard of care and they do not allow any mistake or morbidity. The patients expect absolutely zero defect especially in obstetric. Any mistake that the HOs did will resulted me as the senior consultant to resolve the matter.
It is GOOD that you have the passion to learn to become doctor but in reality but people like you are becoming rare species. HOs usually works like a robot without using their brain. Even that, the robot have to be programmed with correct and up to date software. Many of these HOs came without any basic knowledge like I mention before such as calculating EDD, Partogram, simple history taking, recognising risk factors or diagnose some important disorder such as hypertensive disorder in pregnancy and gestational diabetes. They came with lack of these knowledge which they should have learn in their medical school. This reflect the quality of their medical school (or thier doubious standard of selecting the medical students).
Imagine that you have to teach these HOs again and again, 5 or 6 time per year the same topics just to learn the basic. The housemanship in each posting is only 4 months, they should gain clinical management experience during this period. They should not come and trying to learn O&G as though they are fresh medical student. When you are in my position, I own my patients the responsibility of providing the patient quality care.
About those elective students that came to my hospital, they usually spend one or 2 weeks in my deparmtent. I am most happy to teach them anything during my clinic session. Often they attended one session and disappeared the rest of the week, is it my responsibility to make sure they attend my department activity? Your specialist willing to teach you because you shown your interest in medicine. Same here, the student have to show their interest in the first place.
Studying medicine need passion and is a lifelong commitment to your future patients. Many of the students nowadays just do not have the passion they think they have. They want to do medicine because they think it’s a secure job, a job that you can earn big buck and fame. My hospital also receive those SPM ‘top scorers’ every year before they apply their scholarship. Every year without fail, I asked them why they want to become doctor? Almost 100% of them will say they want to serve mankind, help the poor and weak etc. And also majority of them want to become cardiologist!(I wonder why, probably influenced by the media agaian) The same answer was also given by those elective students.
But when they are back as HOs, again and again, I will see the same problems. They fight over who do more weekend calls, they argue who should do the discharge summaries. They refuse to attend teaching session. SOme even have attitude and disiplinary problem like absent from work and calls, come late, rude to patient, refuse distric posting, complaining low pay etc. These problem exist in every batch of HOs. They just forgot the reason why they want to become doctor.
My purpose of arguing with students like you all here is to make you all realise that your vision of becoming doctor may not be the kind of ideal, glamourous doctor that may exist in your medical school or medical TV series. In real life, the situation is less than ideal, you will face a lot of challenge and probably have the shock of what you will face during you housemanship. Many of you will start breaking down and performing like a robot just to get life going. Some will ended with attitude and disciplinary problem as their coping mechanism when their life as doctor doesn’t match what they expected. AT the end of the day it is the passion and you sense of responsibility towards your patients that get you going in you medical career. This is the factors which make you go for extra mile, which make you do extra weekend call without complaining or taking lower salary or serving in rural area.