We Need More Doctors?
I did my annual medical check up at Assunta Hospital yesterday and it took me total 5 hrs to see 2 specialists! It didn’t help much in the queue though there was a special arrangement between the hospital & the company who sent me for my check up. And this is private hospital I am talking about. I can’t imagine the queue in public hospitals!
Ever wonder why do we have to wait so long in hospitals? And then why is the time we get to spend with the doctor so short? I really have phobia to see specialist, not because of the worries that I may be diagnosed with any degenerative disease, but the agony of waiting for 3 hours just to get a 5-minutes consultation. Ok ok, I may have exaggerated, but consultation time never exceeds 15 minutes! How could a thorough investigation be done if doctors can’t spend enough time with the patients. Simple reason.. we have shortage of doctors and more Malaysians are getting sick!
I found this research from an undated paper by Universiti Sains Malaysia rather interesting:
1. The doctor-patient ratio is 1:1465 and it is more serious in government hospitals.
2. Number of private hospitals is 219 compare to 123 under Ministry of Health.
3. There are 35,981 beds in public hospitals as compared to 8,963 in private hospitals.
4. 55% of doctors work in private hospitals and 45% work in government hospitals.
And more interesting facts:
1. The government targets to have 43,797 doctors by 2020.
2. Assuming our population is 30 million then, the doctor-patient ratio will be 1:730..which is so much better than advanced countries with ratio of 650.
Err… does that mean we need more places for medical school students intake? The next question will be who can and will take that path? If my brain cells work correctly, a CGPA of 4.0 can no longer guarantee a place for local medical schools when the Higher Education Ministry set the co-curicular involvement as one of the criterion for varsity intake. Err..YB.. don’t that criterion only takes us further from our dream of achieving doctor-patient ratio of 1:730? Sounds like bad news, eh?
On the brighter sides, if all of us take great care of our own health, so that we may all live until we die, then we don’t need more doctors at all.
