Doc Shortage - Hold Old Fart Solely RESPONSIBLE!

[makapaaa]

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Doc shortage: Why didn't we see it early?
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><DIV class=story_text><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->I REFER to yesterday's article, '1,000 foreign-trained docs still not enough'.
Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan commented on the need to think about increasing the number of locally trained doctors due to the growing population. Within a short period of three years, 1,000 foreign-trained doctors have been recruited, but it is not enough.
A simple calculation reveals that our medical school will need at least four years to train that number, based on the current picture of 250 to 300 medical students trained each year. Moreover, this is an underestimate of the time required as I believe Duke-NUS Medical School focuses on training clinical researchers rather than doctors to cater to the ill.
This means that, in the next four to five years before the new medical school produces its first batch of trained doctors, there will be a need to employ even more foreign-trained doctors. Pardon the overly simple extrapolation, but the message that there is an imbalance of supply and demand is clear.
My question is, why wasn't this anticipated early enough? It was definitely foreseeable in the early 2000s that the population would rise, so why was significant preparation not done earlier?
The next step is to examine the demographics of the 1,000 foreign-trained doctors recruited. What percentage are Singaporeans who went overseas for their expensive investment in medical training? That would give an idea how many were rejected by local medical schools but are now recruited for Singapore.
I believe these are useful questions the reviewing committee should consider when determining the size of the training cohort in Singapore's soon-to-be third medical school.
Ultimately, in view of all these quantities discussed, we should remain extremely focused on the quality of medical doctors we are training.
Joey Yeo

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[makapaaa]

<TABLE class=Post style="WIDTH: 100%" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0><TBODY><TR><TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: top" align=left>Our gahmen 'growth model' has resulted in Singapore running short of everything... from inadequate jobs and accommodation for foreigners to shorrtage of doctors, nurses, hospital beds. On the surface, singapore seems to be doing, a prosperous country but the devil's in the details. The obvious flaw is our gahmen is not working in tandem with the relevant authorities to ensure smooth operation. If we are not careful, we will end up with low quality health care for citizens due to poor planning. Judging by the kidney bill incident, KBW is very task oriented person, so he's key objective is to reduce shortage. As it is, I understand they are already enlarging the list of medi schools (previously not listed as desirable) so as to enable more doctors to work in singapore. Is quality being compromised? Of course his answer would be "no" to that. ST has already reported that our citizens have problems communicating with foreign doctors in polyclinics because they cannot speak chinese nor dialect, only English with an accent. A friend of mine went to see a foreign doctor in polyclinic as she has a number of bites with pus. Diagnosis - mosquito bites. I never knew mosquito bites can give pus. But hey, who am I to refute. I'm not the doctor. Another acquaintenance was told the reason she does not have bowel movement regularly because she has longer intestines. ???? Interesting.
</TD></TR><TR><TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: top" align=left>Posted by: JoJo2008 at Mon Mar 30 17:15:48 SGT 2009
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[kiwibird7]

The Minister and the Perm Sec of the Ministry of Manpower Planning should be held responsible for all the shortfalls requiring massive inflow of foreign talents from doctors, nurses, teachers, stop at 2 then now 6.5m required population etc etc.

However, the buck eventually has to stop at the PM (LHL) who is always conveniently MIA in crisis situations, perhaps his training in the SAF has horned his skills in taking cover to 'SIAM' all arrows flying in his direction.