The uncertainty, fear, disappointment and distress, among the myriad of emotions felt by the 67 medical students, earlier denied funding that GATE offers after having been accepted to Cave Hill and Mona Campuses to pursue their degree in medicine, was worth it for the greater long-term good of health care and the profession in T&T.
Strange as it may sound, this situation, as painful as it was for these bright ambitious youngsters and their loved ones to endure, brings into the public domain a long existing untenable situation which a medical professor almost singularly attempted to have addressed over a period of many years.
This situation involves UWI St Augustine Faculty of Medical Sciences, it’s processes, it’s standardisation, and a review of it’s admissions committee, the transparency or lack thereof surrounding selections. There have long been vigorous and consistent complaints from unsuccessful students satisfying every criteria claiming bias, nepotism and injustice, tainting the entire process.
A major source of discontent is prompted by the existence of what appears to be a consistent pattern of familial ties, comprising parents to children, cousins, nieces, nephews etc, surrounding enrolment, year after year.
Notably while the medical profession is considered a noble one, such nobility comes at a high price to tax payers since it costs on average one million dollars to train each medical student up to graduation.
As pointed out by the new minister of health, the present government committed in it’s manifesto to improving the quality of health care and the sector, thereby justifying the financing of the unfortunate 67 inexplicably denied funding by the last government.
However, there must also be an immediate overhaul and revamping of the existing process involving not only the selection/admission committee, policy but the board as well. It is also imperative systems are put in place to remove the existing “right of passage” arrangement and to ensure these new doctors trained at our expense are legally bound to not only serving a minimum period in the public sector exclusively, but also the principles of integrity, humility and humanity that go hand in hand with their chosen profession is not abandoned without consequence.
As the learned professor once reminded us “...medicine is not only a profession, it is a vocation.”
Caroline Henry,
Arima.