What Is The Real Problem Of Private Medical School?
By Bruce Tamilson –February 5, 2017
Bruce Tamilson
The court has instructed to Sri Lankan medical council to recognize the private medical school. There is ambiguous opinion among public but all the Sri Lankan doctors vigorously oppose this move. No one has the absolute ability to predict how it will affect and whom it will affect. We need to wait and see.
Medical profession is no more a service or charity oriented. It is almost business-oriented. Most of the doctors do private practice and are money oriented. I am not going to deny that there is handful of doctors who are service minded. The main fear for doctors already in practice is increased competition in private practice. In Addition, in Sri Lanka, to become a doctor you need to be super talented in memorizing and, accordingly well respected. If there is easy way to become doctor within the country, the respect towards the doctors may fade. Only outsiders and public can feel the selfishness and jealous of doctors who refuse alternative entry into SLMC register.
Will the quality of care be affected? I do not think that will be the case. The role of SLMC is to maintain the standard of doctors. Therefore, SLMC can introduce common exam for all the candidates. The similar system is operated in USA and now UK is adopting that system. There are plenty of ways that SLMC can ensure standard of Doctors is maintained. If someone experience or witness malpractice, they need to notify SLMC and it can investigate, resolve and prevent the incidents. Therefore, Private medical studies will downgrade the quality of care is not a convincing argument.
In UK, only consultants or GP [independent practitioner] can do private practice. The juniors who are in training are not allowed to practice independently. This phenomenon makes sure the patients are safe. In contrast, in SL, any junior doctor who has full SLMC registration can open his or her own private practice. Obviously, juniors do not have enough training and therefore not safe to practice independently.
In Sri Lanka, some Doctors use the private practice to charge the patient for treatment in government hospital. This is ridiculous. They use all the facilities of government hospital and charge the patient out side the hospital. They find a hole in the law and ingeniously earn money. “If you pay money, I will do the surgery otherwise, my junior will do it.” This is how materialized in private practice. This is why doctors ruined the public support and respect.
How many doctors who are trained for free in Sri Lanka escaping to overseas? Well, a significant numbers of doctors go to UK, USA and Australia. I am not going to state this is wrong. Everyone should have the right to work wherever they want but Sri Lankan government can put some restriction such as mandatory service for certain numbers of years to the country before leaving. It is easy to implement because arrival country always request document from SLMC, thus this can be used as tool of controlling.
We do not want anyone to become a doctor by paying Money. This could be quite right but not completely if the doctors march against private tuitions and private schools. Those who enter into medical studies are studied in well famous schools and had lots of private tuition. There are students who cannot afford tuitions. So the money plays a role in selecting medical candidates in conventional system. Definitely, the money play roles for certain extend.
Other argument of doctors is People who have low grades in Advance level are allowed to study medicine in private universities. Anyone passed relevant subjects and if the university board allows that he or she is fit for further education, they can study any subject in University. This is norm but Medicine is competitive field therefore, usually people who get higher grade get seats. Also, you may have noticed, people who get low grades from deprived areas can enter medicine and some one with higher grade from another district may not enter into medicine. In nutshell, higher results are not vital for medicine; you just need results that meet the eligibility criteria.
