Medical education and practice in Malaysia, Quo Vadis? / Mohammed Fauzi Abdul Rani

• Main Author: Abdul Rani, Mohammed Fauzi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Medicine 2016
• Subjects: Malaysia
• Online Access: http://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/15233/1/AJ_MOHAMMED%20FAUZI%20ABDUL%20RANI%20JCHS%2016.pdf; http://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/15233/; http://jchs-medicine.uitm.edu.my/

As of June 2016 there are 28 medical schools [1] in both private and public sectors in Malaysia offering more than twice as many programs [2] with yearly graduates of about 4500 including those that graduated from overseas. This magnitude is beyond the usual capacity of Ministry of Health (MOH) that is entrusted to accord preregistration training posts to the graduates as the whole process of allocation to available places in public hospitals nationwide is painfully slow. It is already a tragedy having to wait 6 months on average for a placement but words that a delay for up to a year can occur is totally unacceptable when the actual training places available at grade DU41 preregistration house officers is said to be more than the graduate number [3]. Delay can be detrimental to the training itself because waiting is a waste of talent and potential, a disincentive to a young aspirant, tacitly is a testimony of system failure and deprives the public of highly trained graduates to serve in our healthcare system that ironically suffers from chronic and ever growing wait but yet we have excess medical graduates.