I was telling my students that in the future doctors won’t become pure clinician anymore. The trend witnesses universities sending their lecturers to do PhD. Overseas, doctors are majoring in science and technology. Many are clinician-scientist or scientist-clinician. It is imperative for undergraduates to equip themselves with value-added knowledge in IT, technology or even human sciences.
I still remember watching BBC program aired many years back featuring a follow-up survey of cohort of medical graduates from a university in the UK ten years after graduation. Only a handful of them keep becoming clinicians. The rests are either joining pharma industries, CEO in their own companies, lecturing in universities or even stopped working and becoming housewives.
Clinicians are hardworking individuals. They work long hours. They see patients and have to sacrifice precious quality time with their families, friends and neighbors. Medicine is hardly the first choice in top UK schools selection. That is why UK exports doctors from the rest of the world to fill in vacancies in the NHS. Many of them are from the South Asian countries.
Malaysia will be facing a surplus of doctor by 2020. Until and unless, university medical curricular are geared toward producing multi-talented medical graduates, Malaysia would be facing problem with unemployment of medical graduates sooner or later. The quicker the action taken, the brighter would be the future for our students.
Idea-logy 