Dean of Universiti Putra Malaysia’s (UPM) faculty of medicine and health sciences, Dr Abdul Jalil Nordin, said there were still thousands of medical graduates looking for placement this year alone.
“Last year, there was a long delay in giving placements to about 3,000 medical graduates. Even after six months, 1,000 more had not gotten their placements.
“And there are 3,000 more this year looking for placements,” he told FMT today.
Jalil urged medical employers to give priority to absorbing local graduates for housemanship before selecting those who graduated from overseas.
He also said all relevant parties need to remember the government’s initiative to place the national language in high standing, adding that it was important for medical officers to be fluent in the language to communicate with Malaysian patients.
“We do not want any kind of medical misunderstanding.
“If you don’t know the language, how will you be able to understand the symptoms, manage the patients, provide accurate diagnosis and prescribe the necessary medicine?
“There is the possibility that overseas medical graduates may not be so fluent in the national language any more.”
Jalil proposed that instead of giving the exemption, a standard be created where a pass for communicative BM is required.
Yesterday, the health ministry announced the relaxation of the national language “pass” requirement for contract medical workers, referring to potential medical housemen.
This came about after the ministry had held discussions on the matter with the Public Service Department (PSD) in February.
Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah had told Bernama that potential housemen would eventually need to pass BM in order to work full-time in the health services industry.
He said the ministry had written to the Examinations Board to allow housemanship candidates to sit for the SPM (secondary school level) BM test rather than repeating the whole SPM.
Currently, the PSD does not recognise students with a pass in BM at “O” or “A” levels. It only recognises the SPM BM results.
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