Malaysian Medical Resources

Posts Tagged ‘Schools’

Irwan posted this message in our Facebook Page

1. Im SPM 2012 Leaver, sc stream, Im Sabahan bumiputra..im interested to me a medical doctor. what should i take after this? Taking STPM? KPM Matriculation? which is more recognised qualification?

Both are the same and equivalent routes to get into a local medical school.

2. How many pointer should i get? some people say that KPM Matric 3.80-4.00 pointer to enter the public univ in malaysia.. is this true?

We have no idea, sorry. This probably will not be static and change from year to year depending on the standards of the students. It is highly competitive as you can imagine.

3. I’ve checked the recognition of medical school in Russia via the JPA website & KKM website.. some of the univ at there is approved..i heard(people say) that medical student from there is not approved by Govt..? is this true?

The place to check is from the MMC website, not the JPA one, since final recognition and the licensing body is the MMC, not the JPA. You can see all the links from our Schools page.

Loo wrote in to inform us of a new link for the Medical Schools page . We have duly added Lincoln University College as suggested by Loo – many thanks for the feedback!

If anyone has more links for us, please use our Feedback form

Received this today:

PSM Youth Wing as well as PSM Central Committee Member and Sungai Siput MP Dr. Jeyakumar today submitted a memorandum t the Higher Education Minister.

We, Malaysians are deeply disappointed with the failure of the High Education Ministry to control the private institutions that offer nursing courses. The ministry’s failure to control these institutions’ greed has established a situation in which thousands of its graduates are jobless. And yet, they are burdened with PTPTN loans of as much as RM 50, 000 to RM 60, 000. Here are the facts:
61 private institutions have been given the go-ahead by the Higher Education Ministry to conduct nursing courses; there are currently more than 37, 500 nursing undergraduates enrolled in these 61 private learning institutions. A large percentage of these undergraduates have acquired the PTPTN loan, normally around RM 55, 000:
the total amount of staff nurses employed throughout the country as of December 2010 were 61, 110. Of that total, 47, 992 were stationed in the government sector and the remainder 21, 118 in the private sector;
in 2010, 7, 665 nursing graduates from private institutions sat for the Nursing Board examination. Only 70.1% of them passed the examination compared to the passing rate of 98.4% amongst graduates from Malaysian Health Ministry colleges.

Only 42.7% of nursing graduates from private higher education institutions in 2010 succeeded in acquiring jobs at hospitals and clinics Taking all these facts into account, we wish to know the following:
1. Is the Higher Education Ministry that determines the intake quotas for nursing courses in private educational institutions in Malaysia? If so, what is the rationale for allowing an intake quota of 9, 000 undergraduates for the year 2011?
2. Is the Minister aware that every trained nurse must renew his or her professional license (APC-Annual Practicing Certificate) per year? One of the terms that is required to acquire the APC is an occupational status as a nurse in a hospital. Therefore, if one is unable to get employed as a nurse, he or she is not eligible to renew his or her APC.
3. Is the Minister aware that the marketability of a staff nurse will be adversely affected if she is unable to get a nursing post in a hospital? This is due to the fact that a nurse’s skills will deteriorate if the graduate is not given a chance to practice as a nurse.
4. Is the Minister aware that a lot of the graduates at nursing private higher education institutions originate from families that are not rich? They are hoping to get a job as a nurse in order to pay back their PTPTN loans and to aid their respective families.
5. Is the Minister aware that repayment of the PTPTN loan is required even if the graduate is unable to acquire a job as a nurse?
6. How many of the 61 private higher education institutions currently offering nursing courses have started or are applying to start medicine courses to train doctors?

Our demands:

a. Freeze the intake of new students into private nursing colleges. The market is flooded at this point in time. Do not burden more young girls with PTPTN loans that they will not be able to pay back.
b. Look into the other courses that are offered by the private colleges such as physiotherapy, health care, laboratory assistants, radiology and others. If there exists a similar situation of over-supply for these other courses as well, please freeze the intake of new students into these courses.
c. Reject applications of private higher education institutions to conduct doctor courses if the passing rate in the Nursing Board Examination was below 90% for graduates from those institutions in 2010 or 2009.
d. Take over the PTPTN debts for all nurse graduates who have not acquired a nursing post in a hospital despite passing the Nursing Board’s examination.
e. Conduct an investigation to determine why the market for trained nurses is flooded- 37, 500 will graduate in 3 years, whereas the need for nurses is only 1, 500 per year (more or less 5% of the total currently employed in the private sector). Is this because of poor judgment on the part of officials who determine the quota, or is corruption involved? The profits of private higher education institutions are immense!
f. Review the validity of the policy of relying on private companies to provide higher education for our younger generation. It is evidently clear from the actions of the private nursing colleges that maximising profits is their main focus! The existence of PTPTN loans have underwritten the income of these private higher education institutions, and they are currently competing to attract as many students as possible without a care whether they can provide adequate practical exposure to their students or whether there are sufficient job opportunities for their graduates.
We hope that the Higher Education Ministry officials will study the issues that we have brought up and fix a date within a month’s time to inform us of the steps that will be taken by the Ministry to manage the identified problems in this memorandum.

Link: Pictures of the event in the PSM Facebook page

Like the setting up of medical schools, it seems setting up nursing schools is big business in Malaysia, so much so that schools are mushrooming all over the country. We have already seen a problem of a glut in housemen and more worrying a problem of medical standards and training.
We should not be concerned with numbers but focus on standards. Without standards, numbers are meaningless.
I recall a senior radiographer lamenting the loss of two of her junior colleagues to that red dot down south. Apparently the red dot does not have radiographer training schools – their position is why bother when they can just hire the good ones from other countries? So setting up training schools is not the solution to the manpower (or womanpower) problem. The problem is retaining skilled staff. This means focusing on standards and methods to retain your good staff – better remuneration, working conditions, fair system of promotion and opportunities for career advancement and higher training. The main beneficiaries of all these nursing schools would be the businessmen who are reaping money from the trainees.

Some food for thought in the on-going saga about medical education in this country. Malaysiakini highlights this

The storm is coming… Commercialisation of medical education will soon affect all of us. The glut of doctors is getting worse and many of them are being under-trained,” wrote Dr Pagalavan Letchumanan, a consultant rheumatologist and prolific blogger on crucial issues in health care.
Prominent doctors argue that profit-seeking degree factories in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Egypt and Indonesia, as well as local medical schools with low teaching standards and inadequate lecturers, have condemned thousands of house officers to a hollow career they are not qualified for, and ill equipped to cope with.
The number of medical schools in Malaysia is 35, a staggering number for a population of 28 million. This is twice the corresponding ratio for the United Kingdom, with 33 medical schools for a population of some 62 million.
Of these 35 local institutions, 18 in the public and private sectors have already passed out house officers. Another 17 medical colleges will produce graduates between 2012 and 2017. Understaffing in local institutions is endemic.
The government claims the new doctors are needed to improve the ratio of doctors to patients from the current 1:1000 to 1:400, a level typical of developed nations, by 2020.
The Health Ministry has reneged on last December’s promise of a moratorium on new medical courses.
Several senior government doctors, requesting anonymity, blame political patronage by ministry officials, in this lucrative business of producing doctors, for the huge excess of house officers.
Greed, they claim, has been the prime mover behind the proliferation of officially recognised, but substandard, medical degrees from deficient medical schools, both inside and outside the country.
But many of these same senior doctors in the public service fail to report the poor performance of some of their new interns to the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC), the licensing body.
Some supervisors dread the paperwork involved in blocking the inept doctors from being registered. Others are simply reluctant to rock the boat.
These established doctors clearly lack the mettle of more vocal colleagues, like the current MMA president, Dr Mary Cardosa, who spoke up for Tung Shin patients, and for Dr Jeyakumar.

So indeed has the Health Ministry has reneged on last December’s promise of a moratorium on new medical courses? One certainly wonders when one reads of Ministers officiating the launch of even more medical schools in this country.

See Dr. Pagavalan’s blog For Future Doctors: The Storm is coming…………

A study of about 3000 children in 32 schools in Germany found that installing water fountains, giving the children refillable water bottles, and using teaching lessons promoting the health benefits of water consumption reduced the risk of being overweight by 31%.

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