After reading the malaysiakini article quoting a Universiti Malaya medical student who referred to fellow Perak College of Medicine (PCM) students as low achievers, and newspaper reports accusing Russian Medical Universities of accepting lower grade students, I hereby want to present some real facts on what makes an efficient doctor.

First of all no matriculation or university entrance examination is perfect nor could they guarantee to produce good doctors out of students. In fact, all the doctors know that the practical lesson in becoming a good doctor can only be learnt during internship.

We learn the map thoroughly at medical school but only start to sail when we do our practical training as house officer. Theoretical background is basic and we need a lot of practical skills, human relation skills, good and strong moral ethics to become a good doctor.

Entrance qualification is almost useless except a chance to enter the medical faculties. With daily progress in medical science, the facts and figures are so huge that universities around the world have to resort to a total review of their old curriculum.

From teaching the details in each and every subject, curriculum has moved towards more problem-orientated methods, ignoring the details.

Even in the US, UK and Australia, graduate doctors have neglected most of the detailed basic medical science in pre-clinical studies so much so that there are reports of doctors in post-graduate medical sciences lacking in laboratory knowledge and are not fit to even enter into pre-clinical masters' programmes.

During our time we have plenty of cadavers for dissection and a lot of skeletons to take back to hostel to study. We had to learn about individual small carpel bones in detail, but when I worked in the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital (HKL) some UM medical students are not able to differentiate the names of big bones like tibia , humerus and femur .

To the third year student, I just want to remind him to read back his prescribed biochemistry textbook in Malay. It was published in 1995. Most of these textbooks are revised at least every year or two. The progress in Biochemistry is so fast that textbooks two or three editions late are obsolete!

Furthermore, would you call the following persons low achievers?

• Bill Gates, a second-year university dropout.

If UM medical students want to discriminate against private, paying medical students from the PCM for not being on par with them, please consider the following facts:

Malaysians not chosen to enter local government universities have gone to India, UK Australia with their own money and come back to work in various posts. About 70 percent of present doctors are graduates from these universities.

Ability to pay fees is the most important criteria in all these foreign universities. If you fulfill the minimum entry requirement, you can be admitted to PCM, the Russian universities, Penang Medical, Melacca Manipal, etc.

Parents have spent at least RM250,000 to 300,000 to send our children to study locally. The facilities of UM are also subsidised by our income tax.

However, because of articles and letters critical of PCM admission standards, most medical students from the college are worried about their status. My child has even asked me whether they will be prevented from continuing their two-year attachment programme in UM.

There may be some justification to fight for meritocracy but in other Asian and African countries, where the discrimination is much worse. However, students accepted into Universiti Malaya should not bite the finger of the Education Ministry.

But looking down on others and attacking private medical schools is unfair. In most of the best medical schools in the world, the grades of BBC in three subjects is enough for entrance qualification.

In PCM the criteria is same but students are required to pass the Bahasa Malaysia SPM examination and English for university entrance examination.