Materia Medica Malaysiana

Wanted: Good grades and aptitude

MATCHING aptitude and interest – that is what the Government is striving to do in its selection of doctor wannabes. To kick-start this is a pilot project that involved about 3,200 STPM and matriculation students last week. They were randomly picked to sit for the first Malaysian Medical Schools Admissions Test (MMSAT).
The project, which comprises the test, a hospital visit and interview, is mainly for research purposes.
“This is for the consumption of our researchers only,” Prof Hassan told reporters recently. “The students were randomly selected.
We want to study the correlation between their interest and aptitude,” says a senior ministry official.
All public universities have been roped in to help in its implementation. They provide lecturers for the hospital visits that expose potential medical students to the life of a house officer and the academic staff also form the panel of interviewers.
This new admission procedure, developed by the ministry’s Quality Assurance Division and conducted by the Malaysian Examinations Council, will have no bearing on these students’ chances of securing a place in one of the country's six medical faculties should they apply this year, says the official.
After last year’s fiasco where 128 students with a maximum 4.0 Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) were denied medicine due to limited places, the Higher Education Ministry decided to impose more stringent pre-equisites for selection of students instead of going strictly by grades.
This will only be applicable next year. When the results are announced soon, STPM and matriculation may have to slug it out again this year. The only difference is there are 200 additional places this year compared to last.
Minister Datuk Dr Shafie Mohd Salleh says the number places for medicine in public universities will be increased incrementally so that its resources, especially lecturers, will not be overstretched.
His deputy director-general Prof Datuk Dr Hassan Said, however, acknowledges that if the number of 4.0 achievers increases, the ministry would not be able to cope.
“We may have to bring in the private sector (again). We need to know how many 4.0 scorers there are to be sure if all can be accepted into medical school,” he said in a recent interview, referring to private institutions opening up more places last year to accommodate those who failed to gain places at public universities.
Meanwhile, public universities have been busy creating more places to cater to the demand. UPM, for example, is increasing the number of first year medical places by 15 to a total of bout 120 seats for the coming intake.

Two hundred medical seats are allocated in UM this year compared to 160 last year.

“The increase is not unmanageable. We will need to buy a bit more equipment and there will be one or two extra students per group,” says Universiti Malaya (UM) medical faculty dean Datuk Prof Dr Mohd Amin Jalaludin.
Currently, tutorial groups in the medical programme consist of about seven students and the number will be increased to about nine or 10 students in the coming year.


But does the country need so many doctors? Health Ministry parliamentary secretary Lee Kah Choon says: “For the time being, yes”.
At present, there is a vacancy for 4,000 doctors in the public sector with 13,500 positions available and only 9,500 filled. The doctor to student ratio stands at 1:1,400 respectively compared to 1:500 in Japan, 1:700 in the United Kingdom, 1:650 in France and 1:750 in Singapore.
“Our target is to achieve a 1:500 ratio by 2020. More importantly, we want a better balance in the number of doctors serving in urban and rural areas.
Also, it is not just doctors that the country is short of but also nurses, medical assistants and other support staff.
“My personal view is that students need to go for counselling before studying to be doctors.
People tend to venture into the profession thinking it is glamorous but there is more to it than that,” Lee adds.

Deputy Higher Education Minister Datuk Fu Ah Kiow agrees, saying that students must not confine themselves to one university or one course. Students must know how to choose a course that will increase their chances of being selected.
“There are other medical related courses like bio-medicine, bio-technology and others in the allied health sciences that are useful,” he adds.

While agreeing with the government’s move to promote the allied health courses, Universiti Putra Malaysia medical and health sciences faculty dean Prof Dr Azhar Md Zain understands students’ reluctance in taking up such courses.
“What is the career path for these graduates? What are their chances for promotion and self-improvement? In a sense, they are stuck because a physiotherapist is always going to be a physiotherapist, whereas at least a doctor can move up to consultant status,”he says.
“The government will also have to create posts to take in these graduates.”
He feels that the focus should be more on dentistry, which also faces a shortage in the country and offers a good career path.