Way to have healthcare specialists

NST: KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry must put in place several measures to produce private practitioners who specialise in primary health care (PHC), says the Malaysian Medical Association.
President Datuk Dr Teoh Siang Chin said the ministry should have a training curriculum specifically for PHC for doctors doing their three-year compulsory posting with the government after their housemanship.
Having such a curriculum and ensuring that the doctors were supervised would help the ministry achieve its goal of getting general practitioners who specialised in PHC.
"It’s difficult for private practitioners to pursue a specialised PHC course once in practice as their time is fully taken up with patients."
For those already in private practice, the ministry must make accredited continued professional development (CPD) courses available online, which can be easily accessed at their place of work.
Dr Teoh was commenting on Director-General of Health Tan Sri Dr Ismail Merican’s call to future private doctors to specialise in PHC to decrease the number of unnecessary referrals and admissions to hospitals.
The ministry wants the 7,000-odd private doctors nationwide to be active in programmes that add value to what they are doing. In this way, they can offer specialised care at the primary level.
It also wants general practitioners to be actively involved in the treatment of the elderly and those with chronic ailments. Referrals to larger medical institutions should only be for complicated cases that require hospitalisation for highly specialised care.
Dr Ismail had said the time had come for general practitioners to be fully involved in PHC rather than treat the usual coughs and colds.
In welcoming the proposal, Dr Teoh said: "MMA is fully aware that private practitioners’ skills in PHC is to complement what the ministry is doing. We support it because more than 50 per cent of those providing PHC are private practitioners."
He reiterated that the ministry must seriously look into making available accredited CPD courses for private doctors online besides structured courses for new doctors who were serving the government.
Every year, of the 1,500 doctors who graduated, about 500 sought to be specialists, 100 in family medicine and the rest private practitioners. So, it was better that those wanting to be private practitioners got their specialisation in PHC, especially now, given the public demand.
He agreed that doctors could choose family medicine as their primary specialisation, then take advanced diploma courses in primary care offered by The Academy of Family Physicians of Malaysia.