Most Read
Most Commented
Read more like this

About 20 percent of trained doctors in the government service are doing administrative jobs depriving them of clinical experience. It's high time the government revamped the hospital system and allowed only non-medical staff to administer hospitals.

These qualified doctors can then be channeled back into treating patients thus helping ease the shortage of doctors and also reduce the workload of existing doctors.

The medical academia, the world over, are not usually known for their quest for wealth but for their dedication to enhance the quality of education to help the masses. Higher salaries or other academic incentive allowances to stop the brain drain will not stop medical lecturers from leaving the medical schools in the country.

This can only be a short-term measure as the time will come when these incentives will become insufficient. Also, it's just impossible for the government to match the incomes earned by doctors in the private sector.

Doctors, undeniably, earn more outside the academia - but they in turn are deprived of the many reputable non-monetary incentives offered to doctors in the academia.

Only those who have the right aptitude and interest in teaching would want to remain in the academia. Therefore, the selection criteria for admission of lecturers into the academia should also be based on their interest and predisposition.

The environment in the academia should also be further improved to help reduce the annual attrition rate of about 35 lecturers. There should be better teaching facilities, more productive teaching hours for lecturers and more research funds and opportunities to further hone their skills and knowledge overseas.

There should also be opportunities for these lecturers to earn some extra funds by attending to private patients.

To overcome the current shortage of teaching staff in medical schools, the government should look into the prospect of hiring more retired 'self-actualised' doctors who feel that they could now contribute to the society by teaching.

Another short-term measure is to recruit foreign medical experts to teach. Experienced doctors in the private sector can also be offered to do part-time teaching and many of them would be happy to do an activity that is outside their routine work.

ADS