Some suggestions to solve the SAITM issue
It distresses me to see the massive amount of energy, effort, resources and time that in my opinion is being wasted on the issue of SAITM lately. As a person with NO vested interest other than the healthcare of the people of this country, I hope someone will pay heed to what I say here. I believe I am in a better position than many to comment, having been a visiting physician in Sri Lanka before I was 30, and then having held longstanding Consultant/Teaching positions in the UK and Australia.
The first point I wish to make is that the limitation of entry numbers to medical schools in Sri Lanka is a simply resource issue; we could double the number of entrants and still have good doctors coming out. This is obvious because we don’t hear about students dropping out of medical schools when they study abroad any more than happens in our (their) own country.
Without first hand information I cannot comment on the quality of training in our Private Medical School, or for that matter our State Medical Schools, but the notion that anything foreign must be better than our own has to be challenged. There used to be a belief that Sri Lankan doctors of the past were ‘favoured’ in the UK- perhaps wrongly, but it is true that the clear gap in quality that the English saw between Sri Lankan graduates and other foreign medical graduates made them choose Sri Lankans more often. There must have been even better quality medical schools elsewhere but our concise and co-ordinated medical schools, thanks to the teachers and administrators of that time, gave us the ability to compete with the best.
May I suggest a possible, perhaps simple, solution to the SAITM issue? Back in the 70s a common examination was held for ALL Colombo and Peradeniya medical graduates, just after the final examinations to determine their position in a ‘Merit List’. Those at the top had the right to choose the jobs they wanted, and down the list it went. And NO one could jump the queue, those were the days!
I believe a lot of anxiety and worry for all parties in the SAITM issue can be eliminated by having ALL graduates, those from the state medical schools and those from SAITM, of a particular year to sit a common test. The public, the GMOA, the SLMC and the administrators may then get a true idea of the standards in comparative form, and, of course, there will be some logic behind any action that may or may not be needed. A clinical examination will be too onerous, but the original common test I described earlier did NOT include a clinical examination anyway. The examination could have a clinical bias if deemed necessary, but one needs to understand that dependence on clinical skills, where we the Sri Lankan graduates used to stand out, has largely been overtaken by tests in modern medicine. One just needs to look at how long a patient is interrogated and examined by a specialist these days and compare it with the amount of tests that are requested or recommended!
I hope this issue can be settled promptly so that doctors, medical administrators and politicians can return to their work, the students concentrate on their studies, and the public served better, all in the best interests of the country. Dr. V. Vasanthakumar Australia
I refer to Chandula Arsakulasuriya’s letter in the Sunday Times of 26/3 saying that European countries do not charge differently for tourists and citizens. I have had a different experience, years ago, admittedly, so maybe things have changed. When I went to Spain in 1968, different room rates for tourists and locals were displayed on the room door in our hotel. And at the entrance to Pompeii in Italy underneath the rate for tourists was the declaration “Free to the people of Italy”. Manel Fonseka Via email
APPRECIATIONS