PRESS STATEMENT – 11TH NOVEMBER, 2019- PARTI SOSIALIS MALAYSIA
The PSM strongly advises the Government to abstain from reducing the intake of medical students to Public Universities. According to STAR 9/11/2019 (pg 5) this is one of the solutions being considered by the Health Advisory Council to deal with the over-supply of medical graduates. In 2018 there were 1482 medical graduates from Public Universities, 2509 medical graduates from local Private Universities, and another 1876 graduates returning from overseas Medical Colleges. The PSM thinks it would make much more sense to reduce the intake of medical students to private universities.
The PSM has been advocating highly subsidized tertiary education – and for a good reason. Medical graduates who have student debts of several hundred thousand dollars will not be in the right frame of mind to go and work in East Malaysia, the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia or even in rural areas in the West Coast. They would much prefer to work in urban centres so that they can do more locums as well as train to specialize as soon as possible so that they set up private practice, earn big and pay back their student loans, and save up money to send their own children to university!
But is this why we educate our best and our brightest – so that they can get high paying jobs and pay back their humongous debts? Shouldn’t we endeavor to motivate our educated youth to use their knowledge and training for the benefit of society, especially the disadvantaged? If so, we need to ensure that they are not smothered by huge student debts. If society subsidizes tertiary education, then society would have the moral authority to ask these graduates to spend a few years servicing the more rural areas of the country. We lose that moral authority to ask them to serve the disadvantaged in society if we require them to purchase their education at market value – the tuition fees for medical education in local private colleges is currently between RM 300,000 and a million ringgit!
This is where the Pakatan Harapan Government seems to be floundering. Its leaders come with lofty phrases such as “Shared Prosperity”, “No one will be left behind” and “Caring Society”. But at the same time the government is creating a macro-environment that increases financial insecurity for the B40 and M40. It does not require rocket science to appreciate that financial insecurity will lead to more self-centred coping strategies in the public – the focus will be on earning as much as possible, and not on building a more caring society!
There has been a mushrooming of Private Medical Colleges over the past 15 years. We now have 9 Public Universities and 23 private medical colleges – producing far more medical graduates than the system can safely handle. The most important phase of a doctor’s development is when he or she transits from medical school to the real world – our crowded public hospitals. Our young medical graduates need close supervision and bed side teaching so that they develop the right attitudes and skills. The deluge of fresh graduates has overwhelmed the current system’s capacity to supervise, train and mentor the new generation of doctors. The solution to the problem of over-supply would be to rapidly (over the next 2 years) reduce the intake of the Private Medical Schools by 40 to 50%. If this affects their economies of scale, merging of several of these private colleges could be undertaken.
Flooding the system with poorly trained doctors isn’t helping anyone – including the doctors themselves. What would young doctors with 4 years of experience do if denied further employment in government service? Four years is not enough time to specialize in any field. Private hospitals only need a few non-specialist doctors to man their Emergency Department. So the majority of the young doctors ejected from the government service with 4 years of working experience, would have to open GP clinics and jostle with the existing 7000 odd GPs who are already finding it hard to make ends meet. A significant number would have to give up working as doctors. The level of competence in those remaining in the profession would also be a cause of concern given the fact that their post graduation training was compromised.
The PSM would like the Health Advisory Council (HAC) to go to the root of the matter. The HAC should honestly address this difficult but crucial issue – Are the agencies that are supposed to oversee and regulate the education of medical personnel been able to do their job properly? Or have they been compromised by “regulatory capture”? Upon retirement, many senior members of health departments and agencies approving courses, intake quotas and scholarships for private colleges are offered high paying top jobs in the private institutions that they previously “regulated”. Is this “revolving door” one of the main mechanisms of the “regulatory capture” that has led to the over production of doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, etc? How can this be tackled?
Ordinary Malaysian should watch carefully to see whether this latest suggestion to reduce intake of medical students to public universities (while remaining silent on the intake of private medical colleges) is yet another manifestation of regulatory capture at the highest levels of the Ministry of Health.
Dr.Jeyakumar Devaraj
Chairperson
Parti Sosialis Malaysia
11/11/2019