Kota Kinabalu: Former Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek fully supports the State Health Department's move to make housemen (medical interns) who are unable to cope or are below par to repeat their housemanship."It is good. I support. For those who are not good enough at work or below the mark, their housemanship should be extended.
This is because they have to take care of the lives of innocent people.
People should not be at the mercy of housemen because of the latter's ignorance and incompetence," he told Daily Express.
Chua said it was for exactly this reason that he decided to extend the period of housemanship from one year to two years when he was the Health Minister (2004-2008).
Chua opined that some housemen cannot cope because they are not cut out to be doctors. Many just want to do medicine for glamour.
"I have already said that by 2012, there will be no jobs for them because this country is training too many doctors. They just go all over the world to do medicine."
He was commenting on the revelation by State Health Director Dr Mohd Yusof Hj Ibrahim that about half the 500 housemen in Sabah cannot cope with their duties and had to repeat their housemanship.
He said some were asked to undergo a full two-year training again while others were given a year to meet expectations. If the housemen still fail to meet expectations after their repeat posting, they would be sent to another hospital.
According to Dr Yusof, those who had to undergo repeat postings were largely trained overseas and, in his opinion, may have been culturally shocked by the working conditions in local hospitals.
Dr Chua recalled that he used to go to the respective hospital wards together with the housemen in his capacity as Health Minister.
"I was shocked that their knowledge was less than mine.
After I left medical school, I had not practised for nearly, say from 1990 to 2004, which is 14 years. Yet the housemen's knowledge was not as good as mine. So something must be wrong with the system of training," he pointed out.
Dr Chua said he also supported the idea promoted in Daily Express Forum recently to have one standard Qualifying Medical Examination (QME) for all doctors in Malaysia, regardless of where they had completed their medical studies.
"I fully agree because people who are good should not be fearful of examinations. If you are from Cambridge and Oxford, you say, 'Oh, thank you, I can do this examination and show them.'
Chua also said that all the medical degrees that Malaysia recognises from over 300 universities need to be reviewed.
"Some need to be abolished. For instance, the University of Baghdad is still recognised when it does not exist anymore in its original form.
That is why, to solve all these problems, we must have a single unifying examination."
Dr Chua expressed concern that medical studies have now become so commercialised that even people with just SPM qualification can go and do pre-medic and study medicine.
"So why they cannot cope is not because the system is wrong but because they don't have a strong grounding in medicine," he said, adding that medicine can be very frightening to doctors who are not well-prepared for the challenges.
