Yet another medical school to be built in Perak
posted in - Nation, - Palmdoc, - Training |The NST reported that an International Medical University is planned in the state of Perak.
An international medical university will be built in Perak next year in collaboration with several leading universities, mainly from India, Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir said yesterday.
He said the project, which would involve an investment of RM7 billion to RM8 billion, had been planned for the past two years through private initiatives and the state government would have equity in it.
“It’s some kind of (university) consortium. Initially, the Malaysian-based company will invest RM300 million. We hope they can start operation by next year with a minimum intake. They can have pre-university courses first,” he said at a meeting with Malaysian students in the United Kingdom at King’s College London.
Dr Zambry said the state government had allocated 120ha of land in Gua Tempurung, near Ipoh, for the company to build the university.
“After the whole project is completed we believe it can accommodate 10,000 students from all over the world. We hope to give more people an opportunity to study in the medical field,” he said.
I can hear the groans in the medical profession. Another medical school? How many medical schools does Malaysia require? The MMR lists 22 Medical schools our page with links to schools with websites. There are already more in the pipeline like UTAR. So another one in Perak?
The plan for a medical campus which can accommodate 10,000 students seems rather grandiose. I hope planners realise that when it comes to medical schools, size of the student population is not the key. The important thing is whether or not you have adequate teaching staff in the medical faculty. I say adequate, not even “high quality” because I am concerned that even today, some medical schools in Malaysia are suspiciously lacking in this area.
If anyone is duly concerned about the quality of medical graduates in this country, please speak out. I get the impression that people are mainly concerned with the numbers, and quality comes second.
Perak has already one medical college which initially was at risk of being a failed project. It has since re-emerged as another entity but it’s rather difficult to determine from the website who comprise the teaching faculty. What is the staff:student ratio? How much of the course is “outsourced” to others?
It’s one thing for a business consortium to come up with grand plans to create a medical school. It’s quite another thing to actually execute the plan.
Does Perak need another medical school?
Does Malaysia need more medical schools?
Why can’t we build on the under-developed ones we’ve got rather than continue to build more medical schools?
Related MMR post:
Mushrooming medical schools pose concern
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December 14th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
“After the whole project is completed we believe it can accommodate 10,000 students from all over the world. We hope to give more people an opportunity to study in the medical field,” Zamry said..
Imagine 10000 student go to study, the college can earn easily 2500 million if a student would have to pay RM250,000 through the course. However, Mr Zamry is trying to spoil the medical profession and in return he will score high in KPI.
Imagine in Penang GH, a department can have 40 houseman in a posting period, I have doubt what can they really learn in the 4 months period. If more medical school is setting up, no wonder it can reach 80 houseman in a department later. So, we might have 2 doctors to one patient in ratio in the ward of 40 patients. When these houseman are released into periphery, more likely they will kill the patient rather than save them.
I came across a locum doctor who prescribed ponstan and aspirin to a bad gastritis patient. In stead of pain relieving, the above medicine will cause the patient having upper GI bleed. Luckily the patient still alive when came to me and I managed to send him to hospital. His pain wasn’t relieved with pethidine/buscopan. Hope he still alive now. So now, for doctor who own a clinic, better screen properly the locum doctor you are hiring or your business will be tumbled by them.
December 15th, 2009 at 4:45 am
There are 2 broad issues here:
1. The number of medical schools in Malaysia
2. The quality of this particular medical school
There are 21 medical schools listed on this website (IMU is mentioned twice) and another that isn’t listed (University Darul Iman). This new one between Gopeng and Kampar will bring the number to 23. UTAR has been saying it wants to open one as well, but nothing new has been heard about that since 2002.
Recent Berita MMA issues have had articles stating that we will be saturated with doctors by the time 2020 rolls around. There has been a recent increase in the number of hospitals accredited for house officers but this will be insufficient once all 23 medical schools are in full swing. There has been no moves to increase the number of postgraduate training positions as yet. At the rate we’re going, there will be intense competition for all house officer jobs, (priority will be given to public uni graduates) and the urban GP market will also be saturated with those unable to get on to postgraduate training programmes. The quality of HO/MO jobs (and hence postgrad training) will also be adversely affected due to the sheer numbers.
I cannot comment on the quality of this particular medical school before knowing more information. One might assume they will source lecturers from their sister schools in India, which is probably a good thing seeing that there is a distinct lack of qualified lecturers in Malaysia due to years of neglect (I blame SLAB and low pay for uni lecturers). However, being a private medical school, they are just as likely to pack in as many students as possible and hire the least number of lecturers they can get away with. Trawl the web to look for comments about some of the newer private medical schools … some of them are a joke. For this, I blame the government for giving out licences to open medical schools to every Datuk and his driver. I also blame the Malaysian Medical Council for not being transparent enough. They should publish accreditation reports of ALL the medical schools in Malaysia. The MMC is made up of mainly faculty from public medical schools, which means they may be biased when accrediting their own schools – hence why reports should be published to avoid any such suspicions.
I think I’ve rambled on enough here.
December 16th, 2009 at 4:10 am
I’m a prospective medical student and what worries me is the thought that I won’t be able to get an internship/HO position, let alone decent training quality, after I graduate in 5 year’s time.
Is it possible to estimate how many students are there in every medical school in Malaysia? from the MMC list, there are about 2050 housemanship places available as in 2008. Is it increasing every year or remains fairly stagnant? Well, it’s bad both ways unless there are more willing hospitals to cater for the increase of medical graduates, or else increasing the housemanship places in each hospital will not help much, if it doesnt make it worse, while not increasing them will only create medical graduates who are roaming the streets.
I don’t want to sound too arrogant or condescending, but looking at the lax academic requirements of some of the local medical schools and the lack of requirements for prospective med students to have experience in hospice/caring community before being accepted into the schools… disgusts me.
I understand there are some other medical students who are very capable but have to attend less-than-desirable uni, but how many students of such “calibre” are there? 1 able med student out of 30 less-than-able students?
What I am worried about now is the idea that there will not be enough H/O positions for Malaysian citizen med graduates, whether graduating from local or overseas, and more so the idea that Government will invoke the intake ratio based on races for Housemanship positions, like the ones happening in Malaysia medical unis intake.
December 21st, 2009 at 11:05 pm
There will be more med schools coming soon.The next will be Military Medical School, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional.They will be introducing Ijazah Sarjana Muda Perubatan Ketenteraan coz i read from newspaper few months back.The link to the medical schools in M’sia should add up the Universiti Darul Iman Malaysia Kampus Kusza Terengganu coz if im not mistaken they have started their MBBS intake since this year. BTW, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia is still doing paper works to build a medical faculty as well.Hahaha..what a joke..how many med schools should we have???
December 23rd, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Policticians sometimes just want things done not for a good cause but for personal publicity. This issues have been pointed out years ago and yet no one seems to take notice. Even during my MMA Presidency term more than 10 years ago, in 1998, I have brought this out often in the Press releases and have written this in the Berita MMA “President Page”:
Are There Too Many Doctors Now?
We should now start asking this question. The past couple of years have seen a
sharp rise in doctors’ population.
There are now more than seven full medical schools in Malaysia and another one has been planned in Kedah! The medical schools in Malaysia at the moment are: 1. University of Malaysia (UM), 2. University of Science Malaysia (USM), 3. National University of Malaysia (NUM), 4. University Malaysia Sarawak, 5. International Medical School, 6. Asean Sheffield Medical College, and 7. Penang Medical College. In fact the Islamic International University in Malaysia also conduct medical courses which makes the number of medical schools to eight. Recently Asean Sheffield Medical College closed down due to financial difficulties.
I understand the rational of having University Malaysia Sarawak. The reason is there is a shortage of doctors in East Malaysia and hopefully graduates from that university will remain in East Malaysia. But in West Malaysia it will soon be oversaturated with doctors. The problem we are now facing in our country is not shortage of doctors but uneven distribution of doctors. There is a shortage of doctors in the rural areas but definitely more than enough doctors in the urban areas!
Too many doctors in the urban areas will soon cause a problem that is related to over-production. Due to strong competition for survival, undercutting may surface. The training of doctors and thus the standard of practice may be compromised. We must now consider reducing medical graduates. We should now think of quality rather than quantity. We should aim at producing fewer but doctors of better quality. Too many medical colleges in the country will dilute the talent of good lecturers. Standard will be compromised, as we just do not have that many really qualified medical teachers to be distributed to so many colleges.
The real problem that faces the government is looking for ways to attract doctors to work in rural areas. I have given many suggestions in my earlier President page in the MMA Berita and therefore will not go into them again. But the government must seriously look into the problem of getting doctors to serve in rural areas. However, one suggestion I would like to make is to allow those doctors serving in rural areas a prerogative to set up a practice there if they intend to leave the government service. Incentives such as using a government building to house his private clinic and allowing his patients to obtain medicine from government hospitals at reduced costs may be additional incentives. The government can offer the doctors government land for sale at a very cheap price to help him build a home there.