Medical Professional Registration further explained by Dr JB Lim

The blogger’s note: Dr JB Lim further explained about the mandatory requirements for Medical Doctors to practice.

From: lim juboo

Sent: Tuesday, July 9, 2013 11:30 PM

There is no need for medical graduates to sit for further "professional exams" in Malaysia (or in any other country for that matter) if his / her degree is already recognized and registrable for practice in Malaysia (or in that country he /she intends to practice).

Re-sitting for an exam is only applicable for those whose degrees from some universities are not recognized. In that case he has to resit for an exam plus do an extra year housemanship.

All medical degrees which are recognized are automatically registrable for practice without needing to sit for any further exams by the MMC. This only applies to graduates from unrecognized universities. Example as OGS (note: OGS is Dr Lim’s brother-in-law, retired Chief Engineer of Jurong Town Corporation of Singapore) said, medical graduates from the University of Malaya (which is recognized) can practice straight away after a year of housemanship. There is no need for them to sit for any further professional exams. Almost all degrees (whether in medicine, science, engineering, academic or professional) from Commonwealth countries are recognized in Malaysia which is also part of the Commonwealth.

However, it must be pointed out that ALL medical graduates whether his degree is recognized or not, MUST register with the MMC if he intends to practice medicine. They MUST also renew their APL (Annual Practicing License) every year (if they intend to continue practicing medicine every year).

This APL also applies to ALL other allied health care professions, complementary medicine, or professions complimentary to medicine, example: chiropractic, osteopathic, naturopathic medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, homeopathic medicine, including dietetics, nutrition, and even for graduates in physiotherapy, optometry, clinical psychology, speech therapy, etc, etc.

All these health-care professions MUST pass their respective professional examinations whose degrees MUST be recognized and registrable with their respective professional councils under the Ministry of Health before they can practice. All of them MUST have applied for an APL every year if they are in active practice.

These sets of laws were passed by Parliament only quite recently in order to raise the standard of health care in the country, and to officially recognize all these professions as an integral part of health-care in this country as recommended by the World Health Organization since the 1970's.

Coincidentally, I was a member of this Steering Committee set up jointly by WHO and the Ministry of Health to integrate the various systems of health care in the country. I served in this Committee for about nearly 5 years until I retired in 1994. But it took the government so long after our recommendations to implement these laws because of all sorts of technical and legal difficulties.

Because of these new Acts and Laws, today, a student can now go to China or Taiwan or even to our own International Medical University (IMU) in Bukit Jalil to take up a 4 year degree course in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TMC) and on graduation they can practice TMC in a government hospital with the same pay as a doctor in conventional medicine, or they can go on their own, provided they register with the Ministry of Health.

They need not go for any further professional exams because their university degrees are already recognized and registrable with the government. The only thing they need to do is to renew their APL every year.

The other thing the government is trying to do is to require all doctors to go for CME (continuing medical education) where they gather "merit points" before they can renew their APL. These merit points can be gathered by attending courses, seminars, conferences, presenting papers, etc. But they need not sit for any further "professional exams". They only need to attend the courses or talks, and sit there quietly to listen to gather these merit points.

But this CME is very hard to implement. Who is going to pay a busy practicing doctor or a health-care professional from another town or rural area to come to KL regularly to attend courses or seminar just to renew their APL?

This is almost impossible to implement. We have been discussing on this issue for decades now. Even doctors practicing and living in the Klang Valley find this impractical if not impossible. They have no time for all this even for a few hours, let only ask them to sit for "professional exams" once they graduated from a recognized university.

jb lim