Uncle Chua: Old Fart's Brother Told A Lie in 1993 that Resulted in Shortage of Doctor

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

http://www.tremeritus.com/2014/01/15...ation-screwed/

A generation screwed

January 15th, 2014 | Author: Contributions

In 1993, there were concerns about an oversupply of doctors leading to increased healthcare costs. To curtail an increasing number of Singaporeans going overseas to study medicine, the number of universities and medical schools in the Schedule was reduced from 176 to 28.


Over the last few decades, thousands of straight A students went through the mills. At least a thousand of them got straight As annually for their A level exams. How many of them could have been doctors and educated in our local unis? Oh, the capacity was only for a couple of hundreds. That’s it, nothing could be done to change this number. The rest of the straight A students either switched to other courses or, if they had rich parents, went overseas for their medical degrees.

As the situation stands today, our hospitals are infested with doctors from dunno where. Are these foreign doctors as good as our straight A students could have been? Or are they just average or even below-average, not counting those with fake qualifications? If we had not wasted our straight A students, we would have more of our best in the medical profession and at least reduce the shortfall and need not take in doctors from God knows where and what.

For those who left on their papa mama scholarships, many do not want to return and are lost for good. Why should they when on returning they would have to cough up a million or more to buy a decent small little private flat when they could own big landed properties overseas and a better quality of life? Why should they come home?

The number of such talents that have made homes in other countries must be pretty big. And we end up shortchanged with goodness knows what from goodness knows where.

A generation of our talented young men and women has been lost through our shortsighted policies on not educating our very best in medicine. To think of being treated by fakes or half past six doctors is really scary.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean

* The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.com.


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