by Ravi Philemon
The Singapore Government has given the green light to recruit 180 junior doctors from all over India to supplement the shortage of doctors here. These doctors, who will be recruited over a 3-year period, would be granted conditional registration for clinical practice and placed under strict supervision.
The Health Ministry (MOH) is scrambling to get junior doctors from third world countries to come work here. Does this reflect the shortsightedness of the Government agency?
In 2019, the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) announced that the number of overseas medical schools with registrable basic medical qualifications will reduced from 160 to 103, effective from 1 January 2020. SMC said that the whittling down was necessary to ensure that the quality of overseas-trained doctors practising in Singapore remains high.
MOH and SMC said then that the changes come as the need to recruit overseas-trained doctors abates, with total annual intakes from local medical schools rising from 300 in 2010 to about 500 in 2018.
“The impact of the increase in local medical school intake will be fully realised from 2023, when these students graduate,” added MOH and SMC in a joint-statement.
In January 2020, As The New Policy Of MOH Kicked-In And Effectively Reduced The Pool Of Junior Doctors In Singapore Over 35%, COVID-19 Happened.
The 2-year battle with the COVID-19 pandemic took a lot from our junior doctors and other healthcare workers as they suffered from fatigue and burnout. Several spoke to the media saying the demands of work will make them leave the public healthcare system as soon as they can.
The shortsighted decision of the Health Minister has affected not just the junior doctors and other workers in the healthcare sector, but also Singapore as a whole.
Many Singaporeans Will Now Have To Rely On Junior Doctors From India
Of course there are good medical schools in India and some of these schools are on SMC’s list of overseas medical schools. The MOH Holdings has also said that it is only looking for candidates who graduated from medical schools listed in the Medical Registration Act.
But still doubts linger in many people’s minds if foreign doctors from third world countries are properly trained.
Sometime ago, a local woman recounted to me that they brought their daughter to KKH because she was not having her periods regularly. The doctor who saw her diagnosed their daughter with polycystic ovary syndrome and put her on hormone treatment. When their daughter started having severe side effects from the treatment, the parents decided to see a local specialist doctor.
I remember their story distinctly because I asked, “local specialist?” And the woman said (paraphrasing), “Yes, the doctor at KKH spoke with a strong Indian accent. I am quite sure that she is not a local. But we thought a doctor is a doctor. Only later we realised how wrong we were.”
The local specialist doctor the parents saw confirmed that the KKH doctor had misdiagnosed their daughter and that she did not have polycystic ovary syndrome. The local doctor assured that parents that to miss periods is quite common and took her off the medications prescribed to her at KKH. The parents told me that their daughter is now healthy and they themselves were quite relieved and happy to have gotten the second opinion.
So, while we must value the contributions of each and every single doctor to Singapore and our healthcare system regardless of their nationality, we must also ensure that they only practice here under the strictest of supervision by senior doctors who are locals.
Also, with an aging population which is projected to grow to 6.9 million by 2030, and with statistics showing that large pandemics are more likely in the coming years, it is important for the Health Minister to review the Healthcare Manpower Plan to ensure that it is ready to provide quality healthcare services for Singaporeans.
This post was first published on Mr Ravi Philemon’s Facebook page. Mr Philemon is the Secretary-General of Red Dot United, a political party in Singapore.
