Author: mohdjamil

1. Some people are forced into medicine because of parental persuasion. Parents may think that once they grow older, doctors in the house can help ease their treatment process that may become a necessity in the old age.
2. The misconception about doctors’ life and personal wealth make many parents envious and dream about the life ahead for their children. Nonetheless, medicine is a noble profession. It is not a trade and secondary advantages should not be the aim.
3. A good doctor must possess some good qualities like empathy, compassion, professionalism, hard work, confidence, passion and more importantly, he must like his work more than anything else. As a result, there is no retirement for doctors. Once a doctor, always a doctor!
4. The practice of medicine is guided by strict work ethics. Doctors must be willing to study and improve their medical knowledge for the rest of their life. Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) has made compulsary for doctors to attend continous professional development (CPD) before the renewal of new medical licences.
5. I become a doctor because I like to play a critical role in anything I do. Throughout my career, I was made to decide where should I go. When I was in the Ministry of Health, I strategically decided to push myself into teaching, service and research by joining a university. It was a strategic decision that I’ve never regretted. It gives me a sense of freedom and self-empowerment. I believe human beings should be empowered to take charge and trust themselves as there is no one else on earth that is better suited to determine their ideal and making it happen anyway.
6. 33 years in medicine is a long time. Moving up and about the corridor of services from government clinics and hospitals to private clinics and hospitals; from public to private universities had given me real time perspective of the healthcare business.
7. Lest we forget is that doctors solve problems day in, day out. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills are embedded in problem-based learning (PBL) subjects.
8. PBL teaches students to decipher complex information query into simple learning objectives which they need to find the answer on their own by checking medical textbook, journal and electronic references. The whole exercises help students learn to utilize their brain to solve medical puzzles.
9. My last message to matriculation students is UniSHAMS Kulliyah of Medicine is here to make it happen.

Start registration guys.

1. Those who live under great academic leader like Ungku Aziz can imagine the difficulties in running a university based on demand from the generation that dominated sociopolitical pursuits at that time.

2. Though the era of student revival like in the 70s had become the past, demand from the new generation of iGen (or Gen Z) in the era of 2020s is real and urgent. Even if we pay close observation on the event that lead to governmental change during the last 14th general election, the voting result suggests that the role of this generation is significant and indisputable.

3. Running smart institution like medical school is challanging in many ways:

(a) Having vision is important for future planning of the medical school. As vision help leaders to see possibilities of tomorrow within the realities of today and motivates them to do what need to be done.

(b) Getting good team members provide good team work as the world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

4. We do see many schools of similar orientation offer similar courses. That means competition is stiff when each and every medical school has to create niche area and identifying unique character.

5. These uniqueness has to be made known to potential costomers through proper sale and marketing practices. At the end of the day, market force will determine the survivor of the race tribes.

6. Designing marketable curriculum to meet everchanging demands in medical sector like aging in the population, urbanization and related occupational hazard, life style changes and non-communicable related diseases must always be the priority for lifelong survival.

7. Finally, research and innovation strategies have to produce impactful results to the students, faculty and community at large.

1. When I take student for clinical exam, I have to be a stranger to them. I have to get rid of bias and jaundice view of the candidate ability. Unfortunately, many people have difficulty to be impartial.

2. These conflicting roles are difficult to deal with. One as a teacher who is supposed to guide students and another as examiner who is supposed to gauge how much knowledge acquired by the students.

3. I had humbly confessed to a person who later turn out to be a colleague that I had forgotten when did I last examined him as clinical student. It is not that I’d suffered from selective amnesia but my mind wasn’t focussing on his face when I examined him but rather focusing on his thought and the substance that he presented.

4. Bias is the term that needs to be avoided in any clinical examination. Suggestion is a form of bias. Cues and clues subtly help students to pick up the answer that examiners expect.

5. Playing dual role is obviously hard. I hope I could keep acting well into my 60s.

1. Accreditation is a good process in ensuring the quality of a university. In every process of accreditation, the aim is to ensure that institutions of higher education meet acceptable levels of quality in order to function effectively.  There are many types of accreditation such as institutional accreditation, professional accreditation, and programme accreditation.
2. According to the Medical Act 1971, Medicine in Malaysia is regulated by the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC), a national licensing board which regulates the teaching and practice of medicine in the country.
3. In the beginning, MMC defines its core functions related to the registration and practice of medical practitioners. the period of compulsory service and the provisions related to the registration, practice and period of service provision.
4. Later, MMC has extended its role in collaboration with the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) of granting recognition to other medical schools in the country and overseas.
5. For the purpose of recognition of medical schools, the MMC/MQA endorsed a guideline on standards and procedures on accreditation developed in 1996, which was later realigned with international and regional guidelines, in 2000 and 2001. (Mahmud Mohd Nor).
6. In the Malaysia context, MQA uses accreditation as a basis for other parties including the Public Service Department (PSD)  to recognize the qualification for a variety of reasons such as employment in the public service.
7. Programme accreditation is also used for other purposes such as to apply for loans from various funding institutions, for credit transfer, and to franchise the accredited programmes from an institution to another.
8. MQA deploys Malaysia Qualifying Framework (MQF) as an instrument that qualifies qualifications based on the set of criteria that are approved nationally and benchmarked against the international best practice.
9. MQA has set up a Code of Practise for Programme Accreditation (COPPA) which comprise guidelines on the preparation of documents for programme accreditation and assists assessment process for programme accreditation.
10. The process of acquiring accreditation starts with an application, date setting, visit an institution, tabling reports to various committees including Joint Committee  MMC/MQA meeting and recommendation to the institution.
11. The time frame for the development of a quality assurance document is usually about 12 months, starting from the receipt of the task until the document is uploaded in the MQA website. The important stages of the development process are illustrated in the diagram.
12. The Impact study of Programme standards to stakeholders was conducted online from 1st to 30th Sept 2013 to obtain feedback on the impact of programme standards in curriculum development and review processes of a programme. Among the findings include five (5) years is agreed by the majority of respondents to be an appropriate duration for review of programme standards. The five years duration provides sufficient time to evaluate the content and importance of particular programme standards.
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