Materia Medica Malaysiana

More housemanship hospitals to solve shortage of doctors

BATU PAHAT: More hospitals will be designated for medical graduates to do their housemanship to ensure that new doctors can practise when they have completed the compulsory one-year stint.

Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said the move would help to solve the problem of shortage of doctors, especially in “busy” hospitals, adding that housemen could help out in providing treatment to patients.

He said five hospitals would be upgraded for the purpose, including the Batu Pahat Hospital which would receive between 12 and 20 housemen next year.

In the next three years, a hospital each in Perak, Selangor, Sabah and Sarawak would also be used for the same purpose, he said.

“More medical students will be graduating in the near future and if we cannot provide places for them to do their housemanship, then they cannot practise as doctors,” he said after visiting the Batu Pahat Hospital yesterday.

To date, only 28 of 124 government hospitals take in medical graduates to do their housemanship and from the 1,246 who graduated last year, only 91 could do so due to limited space.

Dr Chua anticipated that about 1,200 medical students from local institutes of higher learning would graduate annually and another 300 would return with a medical degree from abroad.

He said medical students would carry out their housemanship in five areas of specialisation – medical, obstetrics and gynaecology, general surgery, orthopaedics and paediatrics.

Dr Chua said that about RM500,000 had been approved to upgrade equipment and facilities at the Batu Pahat Hospital in anticipation of receiving housemen next year.

On another matter, Dr Chua said government hospitals faced problems in getting foreigners seeking medical treatment here to pay higher rates as they “just refused to pay.”

“For humanitarian reasons, we cannot shoo them away but we will have to find a way to settle this issue,” he said.