Govt to resolve issue of housemen placement – Dzulkefly

KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry will solve the glut of medical graduates and new nurses who have yet to get placement in government hospitals.

Health Minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said the glut was due to an increase in medical graduates from local and foreign institutions.

“The second reason is that the ministry was implementing the human resource optimisation policy which means there will be no additional new posts offered but on a trade-off or redeployment,” he said in an exclusive interview with Bernama here recently.

Dzulkefly said the ministry was aware of the issue and to overcome it, the ministry had taken the following measures:

To change the method of appointment, from permanent to contract appointment in which the officer has the opportunity to under housemanship and obtain full registration as required under the Medical Act 1971 to improve the clinical skills and experience of officers.

To enforce a moratorium on medical programmes with the cooperation of the Education Ministry up to April 30, 2021 with the aim of imposing quota on medical graduates by universities in the country. The original period was for five years from May 1, 2011 to April 30 2016 and it has been extended to April 30, 2021.

He said under the moratorium, there would be no new medical programmes at degree level and no increase in the quota of medical student intake.

However, the ministry will not be able to control the intake or medical graduates coming out of foreign universities.

“Apart from that, the ministry had increased the training slots for graduates from 10,835 to 11, 706 through additional graduate training hospitals. The ministry had increased the number of graduate training hospitals from 38 in 2009 to 47 hospitals now,” he said.

It covers 44 hospitals under the ministry and three teaching hospital (Universiti Sains Malaysia Hospital, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre and Universiti Malaya Medical Centre) in 2018.

Other measures taken included increasing the number graduate training posting.