Obstacles to medical specialisation

LATELY, our newspapers both online and print have been flooded with letters from the public highlighting the plight of housemen. Little do the public know that medical officers who have completed their housemanship also face hurdles in their struggle to improve themselves, spending money to further their studies and be of better service to the nation.

Very often, we hear the authorities lamenting over the persistent shortage of medical specialists in our public hospitals. To overcome this problem, the government is encouraging the training of potential specialists through the medical masters programmes at local universities and allowing alternative pathways for serving doctors to be qualified and gazetted as specialists, apart from hiring foreign specialists.