TOO MANY DOCTORS CHASING TOO FEW JOBS IN MALAYSIA?

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Sometimes it is very hard to understand when they say there are too many Doctors in Malaysia but only few jobs available for them? 

It is quite generally known that Malaysia does not have sufficient doctors, however the move to constrain the number of future doctors in the nation is quite disturbing.

Over the last five years, more than 100 doctors and specialists serving and working in overseas have returned to work with the government and fill up vacancies in the pharmacology, dentistry and surgery fields. Unfortunately, the small number is not yet sufficient to cater the need of the rising number of patients locally.

The result of the shortage of doctors is mostly felt by the houseman officers (HO), who often find themselves working like zombies. The housemanship is the period where the soon-to-be medical officers are “trained” to become an accomplished doctors. 

The period lasts between 1-2 years. At times, HOs are made to work on-call and continued with a day of post-call duty. If the previous night was busy, that would mean the doctor works more than 24 hours with little break.

Some of them reported had come down with severe depression and some even tried to jump from building and take their own life.

Yet, The Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) is all for the reduction in students entering medical faculties in institutes of higher learning this year.

Its president Krishna Kumar said, “There are too many doctors with no jobs and we fully agree with the cutback.”

Kumar also said that since the current minister of health is a doctor, he fully understood the need to reduce the intake of students.

“It is better to make the cut now than having too many doctors in five years with nowhere to go,” he said.

This year’s public university intake for medical programmes will see a reduction of more than half compared to year 2011.

According to Deputy Education Minister P Kamalanathan, this was done to restrict the number of medical graduates and to avoid a flood of new doctors.

Source: Agency