KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 1 — Private hospitals can provide housemanship for medical graduates if the facilities have at least six basic specialisation disciplines and mixed cases, among other conditions, Dr Adham Baba said.
Apart from that, the private health facilities should be able to pay the salaries of housemen and bear the cost of medical indemnity insurance and any medico-legal issues, according to the health minister.
“Patients in private hospitals must also be prepared to give permission to be examined by a house officer,” Dr Adham told the Dewan Negara in his written parliamentary reply on September 21.
Senator Dr Ahmad Azam Hamzah had asked the health minister to state the government’s plan to allow medical graduates to be trained in private hospitals with MOH monitoring.
The PKR lawmaker stated that as most trainee doctors are trained only in public hospitals, this has caused a surge in the number of trainee doctors who can’t be placed elsewhere.
“MOH is continuously working to increase the training placements for medical graduates to go through their housemanship,” Dr Adham said.
He also stated that MOH welcomes private hospitals’ participation in providing housemanship placements to train medical graduates.
Dr Adham listed the conditions set by the Medical Qualifications Committee for hospitals that want to provide housemanship placements:
- At least six basic specialisation disciplines, namely general medicine, paediatrics, general surgery, orthopaedics, obstetrics and gynecology, and one alternative discipline, whether emergency, anesthesiology, psychiatry, or primary health for training purposes.
- At least two gazetted in-house medical specialists and two in-house medical officers for each discipline.
- An adequate number of diverse and quality cases and case mix.
- At least 28 to 30 beds in each discipline.
- Adequate facilities, such as libraries, auditorium rooms, and accommodation facilities to assist graduate training processes.
Earlier, the health minister mentioned that the nationwide lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic has lengthened the waiting period for medical graduates’ housemanship placement, who now have to wait for up to nine months.
The Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia (APHM) told CodeBlue Tuesday that the government should provide permanent posts for doctors or risk a shortage of specialists in a decade across the public and private sectors, as the private hospitals’ group raised concern about MOH’s latest six-month contract extension for some 2,000 doctors, dentists, and pharmacists who completed their compulsory service with the government.
