Is there an oversupply of healthcare workers?
KUALA LUMPUR – This was the question presented during one of the sessions at the APHM International Conference & Exhibition 2012 held in Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre. Based on conducted surveys, the country has an oversupply of unqualified healthcare works and the primary factor cited is having too many nursing or medical schools.
Malaysia currently has 33 medical schools producing about 2,000 graduates per year, according to Mary Cardosa, President of the Malaysian Medical Association. In 2010, there were 32,979 doctors, mostly working in government hospitals.
Cardosa explains that there is an influx of generalist physicians and an inadequacy of specialists. Most Ministry of Health (MOH) facilities are still short of doctors with 50% of the job vacancies requiring more specialists. In her presentation, Cardosa said that the country needed to reach the ideal doctor-patient ration of 1:400; she estimates a 7% increase is necessary to reach 85,000 by 2020.
However, Cardosa speculates that there may be jobless doctors in the near future as more hospitals reduce compulsory service and HO jobs turning into contract jobs.
Oversupply of low quality healthcare workers was also emphasised by Prof. Dato Dr Anuar Zaini, Professor and Head of Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences of Monash University, Malaysia.
Zaini said that hospitals are not giving enough training and education to fresh graduates and that there are not enough teaching hospitals in the country.
To date, there are only five – Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia, International Islamic University Malaysia Teaching Hospital, Perdana University Hospital, University Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre and University Malaya Medical Centre. He then called for a more concerted effort to quality education and research.
Currently there are job vacancies said Tselvin Subramaniam, and yet some nurses cannot find better opportunities. One reason may be that these nurses are new and inexperienced and hospitals are hesistant to recruit, invest and teach them the ropes. The Principal Assistant to the Director of Nursing, Nursing Division of the Ministry of Health said that last year there was about 7,000 job vacancies posted, of which over 3,000 needed registered nurses.
Subramaniam said that the country would be needing 16,000 nurses to be on par with other developed nations. She said the nurse population ratio is targeted at 1:200 in 2020 from the present 1 to 384 people.
The three-day event themed “Re-Thinking, Re-Engaging, Retaining Human Capital, Re- Inventing Leadership” features local and international speakers addressing the critical issues of human capital in the healthcare sector. The exhibition showcases 120 booths featuring the latest technological developments in healthcare by exhibitors from Australia, China, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore and the US.
Category: General health news
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