Medical education and practice in Malaysia, Quo Vadis? / Mohammed Fauzi Abdul Rani

As of June 2016 there are 28 medical schools [1] in
both private and public sectors in Malaysia offering
more than twice as many programs [2] with yearly
graduates of about 4500 including those that graduated
from overseas. This magnitude is beyond the usual
capacity of Ministry of Health (MOH) that is entrusted
to accord preregistration training posts to the graduates
as the whole process of allocation to available places in
public hospitals nationwide is painfully slow. It is
already a tragedy having to wait 6 months on average
for a placement but words that a delay for up to a year
can occur is totally unacceptable when the actual
training places available at grade DU41 preregistration
house officers is said to be more than the graduate
number [3]. Delay can be detrimental to the training
itself because waiting is a waste of talent and potential,
a disincentive to a young aspirant, tacitly is a testimony
of system failure and deprives the public of highly
trained graduates to serve in our healthcare system that
ironically suffers from chronic and ever growing wait
but yet we have excess medical graduates.