I don’t blame the house officers for the patient’s death.

I blame the deceitftul agents that lured parents into parting with their hard-earned money to pay for a medical education in Russia and Ukraine.

I blame Malaysian parents for coercing and sometimes forcing their offspring to pursue a medical degree despite clear suggestions that their children might not make successful doctors.

I blame the universities that make Malaysian students labor for six years in a foreign land learning a foreign language only to end up as clueless, incompetent quasi-doctors.

I blame the Malaysian Medical Council who for reasons best known to them, accorded unconditional recognition to institutions that are way below par.

I blame the healthcare authorities for allowing half-baked medical graduates to roam about causing immeasurable harm and untold horror.

I blame the public for creating and perpetuating this erroneous impression that the medical profession is highly lucrative and glamorous.

Regular followers of national events will recall the controversy surrounding Crimea State Medical University (CSMU) back in June 2005 where the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) decided to abruptly derecognize the medical school.

This was done so despite earlier recognition and accreditation by the Malaysian Ministry of Education.

Worse, some of the CSMU students were actually government scholars sent over there on tax payer’s money.

After many unruly and loud parliamentary debates, during which a deputy minister was suspended and a barrage of racist remarks were fired by Nazri Aziz, all students already in CSMU then were finally allowed to practice medicine in Malaysia upon graduation.

The flip-flop decision by the Malaysian Medical Council has proven to be a very costly mistake....

posted in - Education, - Palmdoc |

Patdave has made a provocative post in the MMR Student Forums entitled Concern over Russia and Ukraine Med Schools (registration in the MMR required to view posts)

I have heard of a HO working in a public hospital in the Klang Valley, a graduate from a Ukranian medical school, who does not know even how to clerk a patient properly or take blood samples. I do not know how representative this HO is of Russian and Ukranian graduates in general.

I am sure there are fine Russian medical schools but the concern is the overall quality of the training Malaysian students coming from the region. It may be suspect if the students are weak and somehow get into medical school despite poor grades. On top of that the weak students have to master a foreign language so I can’t imagine how such weak students can even get through medical school.

These weak HOs will at best be “retained” for an extended period of Housemanship. The trouble is, they are already “in the system”. The “system” permits sub-standard medical graduates (no matter from which medical school – local or foreign) to be registerable, as long as they come from a recognised medical school or if they pass the Unscheduled Examination. Perhaps indeed it is high time we had a Common qualifying exam for all?

Comment:

poor doctor Says:
November 20th, 2007 at 8:52 pm

I seriously doubt the quality of those doctors produced by these Russian medical schools. My hospital regualrly take in students from these Medical schools for elective posting. They are not on JPA scholarship, they are on ‘FAMA’ scholarship.

These are the 3rd year students and I can tell you that they know absolutely nothing at least in my field of O&G. I asked them about their curiculum, they said thier faculty do not have a proper O&G professor, no structured training program, no proper wards for students to see patients. They only clerk average ONE patient in RUSSIAN in their posting in O&G. They spend most of their time studying their books in class room and their room (even though they are in clinical years). They have no written exam except viva.

They even asked me and some of other clinician to give them ‘tuition’.

Source: http://medicine.com.my/wp/?p=2813