Poor Quality of Doctors : Look at your own backyard
posted in - General, - TE Cheah |From the NST,
EXCUSE ME DOC, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING?
Medical colleges churning out sub-standard doctors with no clinical skills
Annie Freeda CruezKUALA LUMPUR, Jan 31: Doctors incapable of diagnosing disease? Shocking as it may seem, some doctors who handle patients have no clinical skills. Bluntly put, the patient is something of a guinea pig in their hands.cont…
Indeed many new medical colleges are mushrooming in this country giving rise to ligitimate concerns on the quality of medical graduates. Poor lecturer to student ratio is a major concern not only in private medical institutions but public ones as well. I am bitterly disappointed by this media report that use anectodal experiences to judge an issue which is clearly extremely diversified. Most of the commentaries in this report are probably biased towards public institutions. It is hardly a balanced style of reporting. It gives the public a false notion that public universities are of a higher standard, which for your information is far from the truth.
When medical students are allowed to answer an examination paper in Bahasa Malaysia, goes to show the level of competency in English among medical students in public universities. This will translate into poor comprehension of journal reports and retard the acquisition of knowledge in these to-be-doctors. The intention of helping a particular group, to an extent of allowing a substandard answer, indicates the quality of these medical graduates.
The lecturer-student ratio at public universities are sorely below par as well. A ratio of 1:20 can sometimes be expected during teaching rounds. Even the quality of lecturers can be questioned with more senior ones leaving in droves leaving the remaining teaching force relatively inexperienced. A major bulk of these places will be replaced by young, naive and inexperienced individuals pursuing the trainee lecturer positions usually through the SLAB(Skim Latihan Akedemik untuk Bumiputra) program.
The teaching program in particular Universiti Malaya leaves much to be desired. Final year medical students are hardly seen in the wards. Majority of their learning is done under simulated and controlled conditions in the comfort of the PBL (Problem-Based Learning) rooms or lecture halls. They will be hardly equipped with the experience to manage the ward or handle the grind of daily problems associated with the ward. In fact, the University Hospital does not reflect that of a teaching hospital at all. Medical students are only visible for less than an hour in the mornings taking bloods or in large groups during teaching sessions with a designated lecturer. Therefore the existence of many doctors who do not have “clinical skills such as patient care, familiarity with the signs and symptoms of diseases, diagnosing illnesses, and doctor-patient communication”, should not be surprising.
I agree that we should strengthen our existing medical schools rather than create more of them. At the same time, the Ministry of Health and Education should take a serious look at the quality churned out by local public universities as well. Never delude yourselves into believing that public universities are a class above. At the same time, media reports should display a more balanced style of reporting and not conclude based on a biased interview.
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February 1st, 2006 at 11:56 am
With so many graduating from medical schools – local and foreign, public and private: all of varying teaching standards and varying quality of students, perhaps it is high time for a common qualifying exam for all like the USMLE.
February 1st, 2006 at 1:52 pm
I won’t run out of houseman to insult.
February 1st, 2006 at 2:23 pm
“Fact of the matter is, there is no hip world, there is no straight world. There’s a world, you see, which has people in it who believe in a variety of different things. Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, use that something to support their own existence.”
Frank Zappa (rock musician)
February 1st, 2006 at 4:48 pm
–original extract—-The lecturer-student ratio at public universities are sorely below par as well. A ratio of 1:20 can sometimes be expected during teaching rounds. Even the quality of lecturers can be questioned with more senior ones leaving in droves leaving the remaining teaching force relatively inexperienced—-
Suprising, looks like there’s CSMU in Malaysia.
February 2nd, 2006 at 3:07 pm
“An irate Fu said today the comments about some doctors not having clinical skills could undermine the public’s confidence in the competence of doctors on the whole.” [quoted from NST online: http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/nst/Thursday/National/20060202084924/Article/index_html ]
Looking further beyond this, I think that if there is no proper ‘quality control’, soon enough we’ll see that any MBBS or MD earned will lost it’s own ‘value’ and ‘trust’
February 2nd, 2006 at 7:06 pm
Apart from the “value” of an MBBS/MD/MBChB, what’s going to be compromised (with sub-standard doctors) is the kind of healthcare the malaysian public will be recieving… and I think that’s a huge problem.
Qualifying exam for all is a good idea, I think.
February 2nd, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Yup! can’t help to agree more with you,YP. And there is where the ‘trust’ began =)
June 26th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Well,
students themselves are to be blamed too.
If they have the passion towards the field, they would untiringly search for information and upgrade themselves compared to those who applied for the medical program becoz they got 4 flat in pre-U.
But in University,they find medic so hard, having a hard time in exam, getting average grades.
Most importantly they don’t have the passion. From my friend (medic student in UM), I found out even though UM awards a MBBS degree but students can opt not to do the surgery partand still be awarded the MBBS.
There are many medic students in UM who are scared of blood, the corpse, etc, so what they do is they opt not to do the surgery part. For the students who chose to do it, they will dissect the body parts etc, when all is done,the lecturer will call the students who opt not to do it to have a look at the body part and give explaination regarding the body parts (blood vessel, vain, nerve, etc) only.
Do you call this student Doctors? Can you trust them as future Doctors?
gosh… Definitely NO, at least for me, wat u guys think?
June 26th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Student: I think you misunderstood your friend when you mention “students can opt not to do the surgery part and still be awarded the MBBS”. What you friend was talking about was dissection for Anatomy classes and NOT surgery. Some of the medical schools nowadays eg. IMU do not let the students do actual cadaver dissection but used readily dissected specimens instead. IIANM most of the MU students nowadays do not do actual dissection either, unlike before when we all had to do it. It’s just a different method of teaching. Do not confuse it with Surgery which is a Clinical subject (not a preclinical one like Anatomy) Trust me – everyone in MU has to go through surgical training as part of the curriculum. There is a discussion of this in the Med Students section in the MMR Forums.
And in reply to your question, yes of course I would consider them proper doctors!
June 26th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
‘Cos cadaver dissection is not a part of my curriculum I won’t be considered a doctor when I graduate? And patients won’t trust me? OMG. Nooooooooooooo…. *cries*
June 27th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
One of my nurse used to ask us what is so great about MBBS?
It stands for Member of Big Buttock Society..
November 4th, 2008 at 12:49 am
[...] here, here, here and here. (Not to offend any university – but just proving his [...]