January 12, 2010
It seems that even the usually well protected medical profession is not spared the onslaught of foreigners these days. According to Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan, two in three newly registered doctors are “foreign-trained”.
Early last year, the Ministry of Health (MOH) announced that it will be recruiting as many as 1,000 foreign-trained doctors into the public healthcare sector to ease Singapore’s doctor “shortage”.
Many of these foreign doctors are sent to work in hospital specialties shunned by Singapore doctors such as Geriatrics, General Medicine, Renal Medicine as well as medical officers in polyclinics.
Foreign doctors now make up about 40 – 50 per cent of the doctors in Singapore polyclinics. While the Malaysian doctors encounter no difficulties in communicating with local patients, the Indian and Filipino doctors will have to depend on translators when they see non-English speaking patients, in particular the elderly.
A key reason for the shortage of doctors in the public sector is the low pay and long working hours. As all NUS medical graduates are “bonded” with MOH, they are paid at well below market rates in the public healthcare sector.
Unless one chooses to take up specialist training, most will eventually leave to set up their own GP practices in the private sector where it is more lucrative.
Their places will have to be taken over by foreign-trained doctors which cost much less than a Singapore doctor. The monthly pay of a final year medical officer is about $5,000. On the other hand, a first year NTS (non-traditional source) medical officer commands only between $2,500 – $3,000.
As public healthcare is heavily subsidized by MOH, it is understandable that it has to keep manpower costs down to avoid passing them to patients.
The trade-off for having more foreign doctors in the public sector is that there may be a compromise in the quality of medical care which is exacerbated by the heavy work load, language problems and different training.
Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan told Parliament yesterday that “with more and more foreign-trained doctors working in Singapore, there is a need to monitor their performance and ensure they are up to Singapore’s standards and are adapting well locally.”
The rising demand for doctors has been spurred by the growing population contributed largely by the relentless influx of foreigners in Singapore.
Despite the shortage of doctors in Singapore, the number of places in NUS’s coveted medical school has not increased by much and remains at around 250, an increase of only 50 compared to a decade ago.
Every year, there will be some Singapore students who have to study medicine overseas as they are unable to get a place in NUS. We will not be so dependent on foreign doctors had NUS increased its intake of medical students.
With more than 50 per cent of doctors practising in Singapore being trained overseas, MOH will introduce measures to arm the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) more powers to limit the practice and conduct of new doctors entering the healthcare system.
Such a move will not be necessary if MOH had paid more attention to the welfare of junior doctors to convince them they will have a career, a future and most importantly, a life by staying put to serve fellow Singaporeans in the public healthcare sector.