Council registration: Doctors in a tangle over red tape

NST: By : P.P., I.L., M.R., S.Y.Y. and N.O., Ipoh

WE are a group of doctors from Ipoh Hospital who have just completed our housemanship posting.
Upon completion of our housemanship, we are supposed to apply for full registration with the Malaysian Medical Council. Previously, there were many doctors who could not fully register with the council despite being in practice for more than two years.
This is due to the fact that the council imposed stringent regulations in which all documents had to be submitted immediately after completion of housemanship.
Otherwise, these doctors risk not being able to secure full recognition by the council. To avoid such a hassle, we have been advised by our hospital to submit our documents (log books, certificates and evaluations) even before we completed our housemanship postings.
To our dismay, the council refused to process our registration, saying that we had handed in our documents too early and, thus, those log books and evaluation forms were signed off too early by our supervisors. The council demanded an explanation from ourselves and Ipoh Hospital.
We have written letters to the council explaining the situation. However, the administration of Ipoh Hospital has to get an explanation from the relevant departments.
Looking at the red tape and "efficiency" of civil servants, this process could take months or years, resulting in the fact that many doctors in government service have yet to be recognised fully by the council despite being in practice for three years.
Refusing to offer full registration, and thus, recognition, to doctors who have served the government on the basis that the documents were handed late or in this case, too early, is unacceptable.
At the rate doctors are being produced by our medical schools, there are bound to be more doctors who will not be recognised fully by the council as long as it continues to question every detail.
In other words, there could be more "bogus" doctors practising in government hospitals even though these doctors have the experience and training, just because their evaluation forms were signed off too early or too late by their supervisors and were not accepted by the council.