KUALA LUMPUR: Almost 4,000 young doctors serving as contract medical officers (MO) will lose their positions in the government service by May 2022 if the government fails to offer them permanent postings.
The Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) and Medical Alumni Associations, in a joint statement today, said this would constitute human resource management crisis.
"Malaysia currently has about 5,000 new medical graduates yearly. Since 2016, these junior doctors have been offered two-year housemanship contracts followed by subsequent two-year MO contracts.
"Those returning from overseas after completion of their housemanship were only given the MO contracts.
"The contract system does not have an avenue for continuation or extension, to allow for specialisation and further training," the statement read.
It said only less than 15 per cent of the contract MO had been offered permanent positions.
It further highlighted three key challenges, as well as the impact of such issue to the country's healthcare ecosystem.
They are lost future for healthcare career and lack of a clear career pathway, inequality of the system and the importance for transparency of the selection for permanent positions.
"The current contract system has no avenue for a doctor to pursue specialist training due to its short duration and service-oriented nature.
"All opportunities for specialisation are only open to permanently employed staff. The junior doctors are the future of our healthcare system and without continuity in the training process we may see a shortage of specialists in the next 10 years."
To mitigate this, the associations urged the government to allow junior doctors to continue their training as specialists.
The ideal mechanism, they said, would be to increase the number of permanent positions to match the population needs.
"The second mechanism is for an extended contract of at least 10 years to cover training, specialisation and registration with the National Specialist Registry.
"In doing so, the government will ensure the future of country's healthcare is safeguarded and the expansion of the services can be expanded, thereby improving access to specialist care in Malaysia."
On inequality of the system, the experts noted that the current contract system does not follow career progression pathway of the permanent system.
They said the new contract officers have been offered a lower grade despite their increased responsibilities, and the permanent officers were offered UD41 instead of UD44.
"We hope this issue will be laid to rest by ensuring that all career pathways planned in the future will continue to follow the established time based promotions."
The statement further highlighted that the selection criteria for permanent positions have not been clearly informed to all the contract officers.
Experts also hoped the Health Ministry would make available the selection criteria for these permanent positions and share the ranking system being used to select the candidates for permanent positions.
"We also urge the Ministry to ensure that the process is fair for all junior doctors, allowing those who are the keenest to remain within the government service.
"We hope that the sacrifices and services of the doctors and other healthcare workers, more so the junior doctors will be remembered and rewarded justly," it added.
The statement was jointly written by MMA, Persatuan Alumni Doktor USM, University of Malaya Medical Alumni Association, Alumni of Medical Doctors IIUM, Manipal Alumni Association Malaysia; Alumni Association of International Medical University; Unimas Medical and Nursing Alumni; AIMST University Medical School Alumni Association; Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Doctors Association; and Medical Doctor Alumni Association of UMS.
The statement is the stand taken by the various Medical Alumni Associations and do not reflect the official positions of the various medical universities, it added.