Originally posted by BillyBong:
Why so defensive? Did i say people bribe their way into the medical
profession? If so we have a serious problem.
I reiterate that the selection process is flawed. Yes, humans
cannot necessary predict the future of potential hopefuls, nor can
they assume that their candidate is the right person. But being
human also means having the tendency to favour one over the other.
We are still swayed by outward appearances, by the manner one
presents themselves and many other factors which are
intangible.
Why is the pool of entrants not expanded? Is that so hard or is the
criteria unrealistically stringent?
In SG context, i'm fully aware that hopefuls require good grades.
But i am also aware that many who are not straight 'As' also get
in. That clearly indicates that your statement of [b]only the
best students are accepted for Medicine is
completely unfounded: the BEST do not get in, and more often than
not, the BEST do not want to join the medical industry.
So you are stuck with 2nd tier candidates. Should we strike them
off too solely on account of grades?
As a doctor, you of all people know that passion and love for the
work is what drives a doctor each day. For the hours worked and the
treatment dished out by unreasonable patients, the pay is a
pittance.
In that regard, grades alone do not define whether a person is
ready to accept his/her role as a doctor. The pool of candidates
should be enlarged to include such 2nd tier hopefuls. We already
have a shortage; by fixing the number of candidates each year, we
are only heaping enormous and unrealistic pressure on the existing
talent, and doing nothing to solve the shortfall. [/b]
Every year there are about 100-200 places for medical students
and each year we have more than that number of students with
perfect scores (3 As for 3 A level subjects) applying to Medicine.
NUS can easily take in all these top students, but instead it is
the government's policy to spread talent beyond Medicine and Law,
allowing deserving students with lower grades to enter, as long as
they are judged to be able to complete the course. Your statements
in this respect are self-contraditory: first saying that that the
criteria are overly stringent and yet accepting that not all
medical students have straight 'A's. The medical school takes in
the best of each cohort, but not all these top students have
straight 'A's, although they are close to it.
We do not have a shortage of doctors. We have a shortage of doctors
in the PUBLIC sector. The ratio of doctors to the population in
Singapore compares very favourably with many western nations. The
problem we have is that the private sector pays 3 times as much as
the public sector and more. We have two-thirds of the doctors in
Singapore serving one-third of the patients in the private sector,
leaving public sector doctors with the bulk of the workload at less
than half the pay.
The polyclinic charges are too low as it is. It is heavily
subsidised and because it is cheap, attracts far too many patients.
If a GP gets 50 patients a day, he will be grinning from ear to
ear. Yet the polyclinic doctor gets paid less than half the GP's
salary and sees 100 patients a day. Of course he is going to leave
if he can...that's just human nature.
I can just see what the Minister is going to do next. He is not
allowed to charge patients more and he cannot pay polyclinic
doctors more. But he has to solve the problem of the long queues
and the high patient:doctor ratio in polyclinics. He will introduce
means testing to polyclinic services. Only the poor who cannot
afford a private GP will be allowed to use polyclinic services at
the subsidized rate. All other patients will be charged higher
rates closer to average GP charges. This will push more patients to
the private sector whilst not penalizing the poor. With fewer
patients in the polyclinics, they will also lose less money. He
will not have to increase charges to break even and he won't have
to worry about doctors leaving the service everyday because they
are overworked and underpaid.
The result of all this grumbling about long queues at polyclinics
may be that the better off will no longer be able to access
subsidized polyclinic services in future.
