Makkah newspaper

THE number of unemployed doctors who have not found a job because they did not pass the practice license tests is on the increase. The poor courses of some medical colleges and the absence of internship programs at hospitals are to be blamed for such a situation.

The participants in the Conference of Healthcare Workforce Reality called for not opening more medical colleges and for reducing the intake of students in medical colleges. I was shocked by these recommendations, which were announced last month.

I do not understand why the participants recommended that no more public or private medical colleges should be opened in the next 12 years until 2030. Why did they call for reducing the number of students applying for bachelor’s degree in dentistry or pharmacy by 50 % over the next four years? They also called for stopping scholarship programs for undergraduate studies for dentistry and human medicine.

The participants justified these recommendations by saying that the increasing number of graduate medical students is too big for the market as well as private/public hospitals and cannot be accommodated. In their opinion, this increasing number of graduates is the reason why today a large number of medical students flunked the practice license test.

The question that poses itself here is: Will these recommendations increase the number of doctors or reduce unemployment among doctors? We all agree that we need to ensure that graduate students enjoy a high-level education. We have 90,000 doctors, male and female, of whom 74% are not Saudi.

The recommendations were made following the increasing number of newly-opened medical colleges. There are 37 human medicine colleges, 27 dentistry colleges and 27 pharmacy colleges. These colleges keep graduating students year after year without focusing on what the market and hospitals really need. Riyadh medical colleges have 8,000 students while there is only one public hospital, which cannot accommodate this large number of students who need training. The participants should have recommended that more hospitals be built.

There are two doctors for each bed at the public hospitals while in the private sector the ratio is one doctor for five beds, which conforms to international standards. We need more doctors in the public hospitals. Saudi doctors have proved themselves in the field and can today perform very complicated operations.