KUALA LUMPUR, July 23 — The Academy of Medicine of Malaysia (AMM) is now calling for different regulatory requirements and quality assurance processes between university and parallel pathway specialty training programmes.
AMM’s statement today reiterating the need for Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) accreditation – only for universities’ postgraduate medical programmes, but not the “parallel pathway” programmes run by specialist societies like AMM itself or others – was issued even though the MQA has been decoupled from the Medical Act in the 2024 amendment bill.
“The MMC press statement from 2021 had already clarified that the MQA accreditation is required for university-based programmes, but not for ‘parallel pathway’ qualifications. It also added that MMC (Malaysian Medical Council) together with MQA will ensure the quality of local medical specialist training programmes meet the required standards,” AMM said in its statement.
“Although the current accreditation process (prior to MMC’s recognition of the new qualification) involves universities submitting the required documents to MQA, it is MMC that nominates the panel of assessors who are trained by MMC; accreditation also uses MMC’s evaluation instrument adapted from MQA’s seven areas of focus for accreditation, which has incorporated MMC’s standards and specialty-specific requirements (SSR).
“MMC has alluded that the same quality assurance process will apply for non-university-based programmes in order for MMC to recognise the new qualification.
“A recognition process for non-university-based programmes must take into account equally robust standards of quality assurance, similar to the current MQA accreditation process, using the same MMC standards and SSR, the same pool of trained assessors and the same evaluation instrument. This helps to maintain the excellent standards for both university-based and parallel pathway specialist training programmes.”
The Medical (Amendment) Bill 2024 – which was passed by the Dewan Rakyat last week and is expected to also sail through the Dewan Negara – does not provide for differential treatment or different regulatory requirements between postgraduate medical programmes provided by universities and specialty training programmes provided by specialist societies. All these various programmes are treated the same.
The original Section 4A(2)(h) – which empowered the MMC to “recognise and accredit medical qualifications based upon the recommendation of the Joint Technical Committee established under the MQA Act for the purpose of registration” – was also repealed from the 2024 amendment bill and replaced instead with a more general “recognise qualifications for registration of medical practitioners under this Act.”
Any upcoming Regulations must be based on the principal Act as their source of legal authority, or punca kuasa.
The decoupling of the MQA from the Medical Act means that all specialty training programmes – irrespective of whether they’re provided by universities, specialist societies, or the Ministry of Health (MOH) – are not legally required to obtain MQA accreditation for the purposes of listing on the Fourth Schedule of the Medical Act containing the List of Registrable Specialist Qualifications, or for their graduates to enter the National Specialist Register (NSR).
Whether universities voluntarily opt to seek MQA accreditation nonetheless to get listed on the Malaysian Qualifications Register (MQR) is entirely irrelevant to the objective of MMC recognition and NSR registration.
As it is, even though the Health Minister has yet to prescribe Regulations (since the bill is still going through Parliament and is not yet gazetted as an Act), the Fourth Schedule has already codified into law multiple qualifications from programmes without MQA accreditation.
MMC’s old June 24, 2021, press statement, which was cited by AMM, will be overridden by the new Medical Act 2024 after the bill passes Dewan Negara, gets royal assent, and is gazetted.
AMM issued its statement after the Malaysian Public University Medical Deans Council (MDC) yesterday called for the formation of a new medical equivalent to the MQA – an “independent and external entity” – to oversee the evaluation of specialist qualifications and training. The 2024 Medical amendment bill does not provide for such an entity.
AMM’s statement today was signed by four university professors in AMM: Master Prof Dr Rosmawati Mohamed, Deputy Master Prof Dr Hanafiah Harunarashid, Scribe Prof Dr Roslina Abdul Manap, and Bursar Prof Dr Chan Yoo Kuen.
