Last week, TOC published a news article highlighting that the Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) is currently searching for a recruitment agency to help recruit 240 doctors from India (‘Singapore’s MOH looking for recruitment agency to help recruit 240 doctors from India‘, 27 Sep 2022).

This information was discovered through an open tender which MOH put up through its company, MOH Holdings Pte Ltd (MOHH). The tender was put up on 6 Sep and closes on 10 Oct. MOHH is the holding company of Singapore’s public healthcare clusters – National University Health System, National Healthcare Group and Singapore Health Services.

MOHH added that it hopes to recruit 60 Medical Officers from India annually from 2022 to 2024, with the option to extend “this project” for an additional year to 2025. In other words, MOHH wants to recruit as many as 240 Indian doctors from this tender project over 3 years.

MOHH: Over 90% of junior doctors hired are local

In response to the publication of the above TOC article as well as concerns from netizens on social media, MOHH replied through the Straits Times on Saturday (‘Over 90% of junior doctors hired are local: MOH Holdings‘, 1 Oct 2022).

MOHH declared that over 90 per cent of junior doctors recruited annually are locals. It added that it has increased the local pipeline over the years. Between 2012 and 2019, Singapore’s medical schools increased their combined intakes by 45 per cent from 350 in 2012 to about 510 in 2019, it said.

“We size the intake of our local universities, based on the needs of the healthcare sector and also the admission standards of the universities,” MOHH said. “Naturally, this means that places in medical schools are highly sought after, admission is very competitive but, on the other hand, graduates from our medical school are very highly regarded.”

MOHH stressed that it has been recruiting doctors from other countries too, not just India, in order to supplement Singapore’s capacity needs and help reduce the heavy workload of existing doctors. “Regardless of nationality, we value the contributions of each and every single doctor to Singapore and our healthcare system,” it said.
When asked whether MOHH intends to expand the recruitment of Singaporean doctors trained overseas, MOHH declined to comment. When asked if doctors from India form the majority of foreign doctors here in Singapore, it also declined to say. It further refused to comment whether it issues similar tenders for recruitment services to recruit foreign doctors outside of India.

Tough competition with overseas recruitment for Singapore in light of working conditions and wages

In the article, TOC also revealed that currently, only 2 Indian medical schools are on the Singapore Medical Council’s (SMC) approved list:

In particular, its top medical schools like the All‑India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) approved by SMC, have been mired in various scandals over time. For example, in 2011, fraud was discovered in AIIMS’ entrance exams allowing students to cheat in order to get into the school. Another time in 2014, AIIMS landed itself in a controversy over the discovery of embezzlement of funds to the tune of 1 billion rupees after an audit conducted by the Indian Health Ministry.

Nevertheless, it would seem that Singapore’s MOH continues to value doctors from India based on its latest tender to engage a recruitment agency to import doctors from the country. And it remains a question as to the quality of doctors that Singapore could attract from India, given the strong competition of hiring from OECD countries such as United States and United Kingdom with higher wages, better working conditions and generous welfare packages.

The same problem arises when it comes to hiring Singaporeans who are medically trained overseas back to Singapore as junior doctors.

Dr Paul Tambyah, a senior consultant at the Singapore’s National University Hospital, who was speaking in his personal capacity at a forum back in 2017, shared that junior doctors had told him that every time they complain about conditions in public hospitals, the administrators don’t seem perturbed by it.

The public hospital administrators was said to have warned junior doctors who complained that they can be replaced with someone from south or south-east Asia who is willing to work for S$3,000 a month (or annual salary of S$39,000 including 13th month).

In support of the description made by Dr Tambyah, Singapore publication, Rice Media recently published an article talking about how young local doctors in the country are drained and gaslit through their work, with toxic working culture in hospitals and gaslighting via feedback when complaints from doctors are being made.

The article reports: “one of the most strenuous and least understood parts of being a junior doctor are the overnight calls. They typically start from 5pm and don’t include the typical day duties the doctor has to perform from 5am to 6am that morning, which runs till about 12pm the next day.

That amounts to about 30 hours at work—barring any rest times. As the on-call doctor, depending on the medical institution, you’ll usually be overseeing anywhere between 100 to 200 patients, a stark contrast to day duties, where you only see about 40 patients.”

So if Singaporeans who are trained overseas by universities that are recognised and well-treated in the host countries where they are situated at, would they choose to stay where they are or come back to slog it out as the junior doctors do in Singapore hospitals?

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