This is a response to yesterday’s statement by the Group of Professors of Health and Medicine, as reported by CodeBlue in an article titled “University Opposition Swells Against Amending Medical Act For Parallel Pathway”.
Single centres cannot start a training programme without the help of specialist trainers. The specialists are required to start a specialist training programme.
There should be a proper training programme. Based on current law, this needs to have approval from the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA).
MQA has set a WRONG precedent by allowing single Universities MQA approval to conduct specialist training programmes.
How can a few specialists in a University conduct a full scale specialist training programme with trainers, log books, referees and third party invigilators to oversee a specialist training programme, which will and MUST be recognised by all other specialist peers in this country?
The law should be amended so that professional bodies are allowed to form a Board of Specialist training programme that will be accepted by ALL peers in the specialty group. Everyone in the professional body will be involved in this.
The Board of Urology has managed to do this since 1999.
In the Board of Urology training programme, ALL urologists in this country are involved in training – the public, university and private urologists come together to form representatives in the Board of Urology.
A group of Urology trainers are appointed and strict entry criteria and probationary period allowed for any trainees to be assessed to see if they are fit to undergo the training. These involve log books, referee assessment, annual / biannual exams, the necessity to publish papers in international peer-reviewed journals etc.
In this situation, ALL universities AND ALL public hospitals in this country that provide urology services are involved with urology training under the eyes of the Board of Urology.
The trainees are rotated in different states so they will obtain maximum exposure.
To ensure there is a third party to overlook the progress, the Royal College of Surgeons of Glasgow was brought in to be involved as Conjoined examiners under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Royal Colleges and the Ministry of Health (MOH).
The MQA approval to provide single universities or few universities as training grounds for specialist training is a BAD PRECEDENT, hence the law should be amended on this.
This type of approval will not get the desired approval by ALL specialist peers in this country. That is why there is division among specialist groups forming in this country who do not recognise each other’s training.
The red tape of getting MQA approval should be brought about by an amendment of the law.
A new amendment of the law should allow the professional body to spearhead this specialist training programme – to unite all specialists in the professional body to include public, university and private sector specialists to form a training Board of Specialists.
This Board will then decide on the various approved training centres throughout the country with a single exam and single training Board.
That is the only way forward for medical specialist training in this country.
If not, there will be a divisive group of specialists who will not recognise or approve each other’s training, hence causing confusion when National Specialist Register (NSR) approval need to be given thereafter.
For this, the Health Minister has to bulldoze the amendments to the Medical Act, before things worsen.
There will be little Napoleons in various groups who will try their best to block these proposed amendments, but the government needs to be staunch in their stand on the amendment of the law.
Otherwise, the future of specialist training in this country will cause a lot of confusion and form divisive groups of specialists sabotaging each other.
Dr Rajeentheran Suntheralingam is a senior consultant urologist and urological surgeon.
MBBS, FRCS (Edin), FRCS (Glasgow), FRCS Urology (Glasgow),
Urology Board Certificate (Mal), AM (Mal)
Dr Rajeentheran was trained under the Board of Urology Malaysia after initially attaining his Fellowship from the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and subsequently underwent further training in the specialty of Urology at the Bristol Urological Institute, United Kingdom: training in the fields of Urodynamics, Incontinence Surgery and Female Urology, Andrology, Laparoscopic Urology and Uro-Oncology. His special interest lies in the field of Uro-Oncology and Female Urology, Neuro-urology and Urodynamics.
- This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of CodeBlue.
