KUALA LUMPUR, March 26 — Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii today refuted the Malaysian Medical Council’s (MMC) claim that it had never recognised the parallel pathway programme in cardiothoracic surgery with the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) in the United Kingdom.
The DAP lawmaker pointed out that there are already seven practising cardiothoracic surgeons with the Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh qualification, as recognised by the National Specialist Register (NSR).
“That is why I believe the statement issued by MMC on 25th March 2024 to claim that the Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) was never recognised by MMC is not only inconsistent, but does not send the right message to address this issue amicably,” Dr Yii said in a statement today.
MMC president Dr Muhammad Radzi Abu Hassan – who is also the Health director-general overseeing the Ministry of Health (MOH) – issued a statement yesterday in his MMC capacity, denying that the Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) in Cardiothoracic Surgery was, “at any time”, recognised by the MMC.
Dr Yii, however, said the MOH itself had started the parallel pathway programme in 2016 that currently has 32 trainees, including four who completed the training. The MMC, however, recently rejected NSR registration applications by these four who graduated from RCSEd in cardiothoracic surgery.
While the Bandar Kuching MP did not list the seven practising cardiothoracic surgeons with the Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh qualification, CodeBlue’s search on NSR’s website found seven doctors with that qualification, named FRCS (Cardiothoracic), FRCSEd (CTH), or FRCSEd (C-TH), all from RCSEd.
The NSR numbers of those seven cardiothoracic surgeons are 129248, 131595, 135305, 129645, 131932, 131847, and 124314.
Dr Yii also said while he welcomed MMC’s announcement on a new task force to resolve the NSR registration for parallel pathway graduates, he said “it should be done swiftly and those registered and completed the training should be allowed to be registered as full surgeons”.
He pointed out that the cardiothoracic surgery parallel pathway programme with RCSEd is recognised and widely accepted in Singapore, Hong Kong, Brunei, and the UK.
“We already don’t have enough cardiothoracic surgeons and there is no reason to make it harder to recognise those who were properly trained under a credible training programme. We do not want to worsen our brain drain and lose them to another country at the expense of our patients and country.”
Citing archived versions of the NSR website, the Malaysian Medical Association Schomos said the Fellow of Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) in Cardiothoracic Surgery was recognised on April 4, 2016 and listed on the NSR as recently as January 23, 2022.
Currently, the NSR website does not have a list of recognised postgraduate qualifications in medicine, with the list only being available on MMC’s website. The list excludes the Fellow of Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) in Cardiothoracic Surgery.
