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No jobs for medical graduates next year, says Malaysian Medical Association

Published by Afterschool.my on Nov 13, 2013, 10:53 am

  • Jobs for medical graduates is slowly diminishing due to the oversupply of medical students graduating every year.
  • In a 2011 ministry's annual report, there were 28,039 medical officer posts of which 21,765 were filled. By today, the remaining 6,544 posts have probably been filled.

tharmaseelan

Malaysia has roughly 40 private medical colleges and 375 recognised colleges overseas, and each year about 5,000 medical students graduate --- "...the highest number in Malaysian history", commented Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) president Datuk Dr N.K.S. Tharmaseelan.

Malaysia is targeting to reach the World Health Organisation's standard of one doctor to 400 patients (1:400) however there is not enough infrastructure to enable this goal and most medical colleges do not have their own hospitals.

According to Tharmaseelan, most states have only one hospital that serves as a referral centre. "This is certainly inadequate. Medical graduates need to be trained. For that, you need hospitals."

To date there are 144 government hospitals, of which 48 are designated as training hospitals for house officers. Only one hospital is being planned in the next five years.

There are only 5 medical schools that have their own teaching hospitals and these are USM, IIUM, Perdana University, UKM and UM.

In addition, the quality of medical graduates has dwindled. It has been reported that colleges only require four B4 credits in SPM or STPM. Moreso, housemanship  and compulsory services have been slashed down to 2 years  and 1 year, respectively as opposed to the original 1 year of housemanship and 3 years of compulsory service.

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