Sunday, March 23, 2008

JPA scholar

Dinner in Beautiful Rainbow Garden again.

These few days, LKS's blog published a few letters written in by some 'medical' persons ranting about their problems in the healthcare services.

Dr. LMK, an eye specialist oversea who lamented about his inability to come back to serve the country because his specialist qualification is not recognized here.

This was followed by LTT, who sympathized with Dr. LMK and went on to elaborate on the politics behind the issues with racial intonation. Related MMR link. Interesting to read at.

The latest letter by Frustrated JPA scholar really disgusted me of knowing that there is still indeed some selfish freak who thinks the whole Malaysians, especially the tax payers owe him/her a favor. Not satisfied of getting a more than half a million Ringgit to go to Ireland to study Medicine, he/she still complained that JPA being unreasonable and ridiculous for imposing ruling that requires the medical scholars to come back to serve the country upon completing their studies in overseas.

His/her writing showed the arrogance side of one of the country's top scorers who managed to secure a prestigious scholarship to study abroad. This medical student is outright rude and ungrateful and should not have been given such scholarship in the first place.

Our country, especially the east coast of Penisular Malaysia and east Malaysia, is very short of medical doctors and yet his/her concern now is on how he/she been able to improve him/herself by continuing to work in overseas to get the so-called 'first world' post-graduate specialist training.

He/she also looked down on the local health care services, local medical graduates and locally trained House officers, as well as sees his/her own country as inferior, that there is no purpose for him/her to stay on to serve or treat the sicks.

I am indeed very eager to see him/her come back soon to the country to serve his/her poor fellow family members or relatives, and to show us how his/her 'first world' undergraduate degree makes him/her better than the rest. Show us how you function as 'first world' houseman first before even thinking yourself been 'first world' specialist!

I am proud that I am 100% locally trained and been given the opportunity to upgrade myself without the need to go overseas. Although I am not a straight As scorer, I am also proud that I did better than many straight As fellows in medical school. Despite taking the JPA RM30,000 scholarship and get bonded for 10 years (!!!), I have no regret and I am still very grateful that I am able to continue doing the things that I wanted to do, to heal the sicks and to serve mankind irrespective of their status.


7 comments:

Anonymous said...

If I'm not mistaken. The preference of consultant or specialist registrar post would be given to UK or EU citizen. Then if the post were not fully filled by the above mentioned 2 groups, the post would be opened to others.
A lot of non-UK and non-EU candidate are affected by this policy and the effux of them rushing out and searching for new greener pasture had begun.


LMK might be one of them that is affected by similar policy. The problem arised when his fellowship degree is not qualify him to work as a specialist in Msia after 2005. He might hold a fellowship degree in which he himself might not be working as a consultant over there. In fact, if he were to go for job interview in S'pore, high chance that he might not being offered a consultant post but most probably a registrar post.

Mediviron UOA Clinic said...

hi cytusm. great to hear that you enjoy your field of work. all the best!

mangchikla said...

10 years straight mighty long time frame there doc.

Anonymous said...

Well i think the all JPA scholars are always looking for ways to get out of their contract, n the amount spent on them are not just half a million, studying in europe or australia cost more than a million.besides they can claim anything from their travel allowance or living allowance when they are sent to country hospitals-i dont think even drs get them. We must make sure they come back straight or pay the full amount plus the interest or else malysia are losing out training drs for other countries

fibrate said...

Hey cytusm, I'm proud to say that we're products of the same med school. Well, RM 900 a semester and still holding our own! :D

Anonymous said...

I guess it depends very much on how much exposure one has after being overseas. The reason that a student might want to stay back overseas to learn about overseas material is to improve the country once they return. I am also a JPA student (but am not a medical student, am a law student) so I'm rather inclined to think (and this is purely my own humble opinion) that as the window of opportunity opens, one must jump at it and gain as much as possible while overseas. There is so much to learn and so much to gain and it opens one's eyes to what our country's been missing. And the rewarding thing is returning to serve Malaysia after being enriched and enlightened by the experiences that no money can buy (yes, not even the JPA loan can buy). It's so invaluable that the very reason the tax payers pay these sums of money is to bring back technology as much as possible.

p/s: I'm sorry if this has offended anyone at all, for I have no intention of doing so.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.