Two out of three doctors in Singapore are “foreign-trained”
January 12th, 2010 | 
Author: Written by Our Correspondent
It seems that even the usually well protected medical profession is not spared the onslaught of foreigners these days. According to Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan, two in three newly registered doctors are “foreign-trained”.
Early last year, the Ministry of Health (MOH) announced that it will be recruiting as many as 1,000 foreign-trained doctors into the public healthcare sector to ease Singapore’s doctor “shortage”.
Many of these foreign doctors are sent to work in hospital specialties shunned by Singapore doctors such as Geriatrics, General Medicine, Renal Medicine as well as medical officers in polyclinics.
Foreign doctors now make up about 40 – 50 per cent of the doctors in Singapore polyclinics. While the Malaysian doctors encounter no difficulties in communicating with local patients, the Indian and Filipino doctors will have to depend on translators when they see non-English speaking patients, in particular the elderly.
A key reason for the shortage of doctors in the public sector is the low pay and long working hours. As all NUS medical graduates are “bonded” with MOH, they are paid at well below market rates in the public healthcare sector.
Unless one chooses to take up specialist training, most will eventually leave to set up their own GP practices in the private sector where it is more lucrative.
Their places will have to be taken over by foreign-trained doctors which cost much less than a Singapore doctor. The monthly pay of a final year medical officer is about $5,000. On the other hand, a first year NTS (non-traditional source) medical officer commands only between $2,500 – $3,000.
As public healthcare is heavily subsidized by MOH, it is understandable that it has to keep manpower costs down to avoid passing them to patients.
The trade-off for having more foreign doctors in the public sector is that there may be a compromise in the quality of medical care which is exacerbated by the heavy work load, language problems and different training.
Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan told Parliament yesterday that “with more and more foreign-trained doctors working in Singapore, there is a need to monitor their performance and ensure they are up to Singapore’s standards and are adapting well locally.”
The rising demand for doctors has been spurred by the growing population contributed largely by the relentless influx of foreigners in Singapore.
Despite the shortage of doctors in Singapore, the number of places in NUS’s coveted medical school has not increased by much and remains at around 250, an increase of only 50 compared to a decade ago.
Every year, there will be some Singapore students who have to study medicine overseas as they are unable to get a place in NUS. We will not be so dependent on foreign doctors had NUS increased its intake of medical students.
With more than 50 per cent of doctors practising in Singapore being trained overseas, MOH will introduce measures to arm the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) more powers to limit the practice and conduct of new doctors entering the healthcare system.
Such a move will not be necessary if MOH had paid more attention to the welfare of junior doctors to convince them they will have a career, a future and most importantly, a life by staying put to serve fellow Singaporeans in the public healthcare sector.
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My family doc is ‘foreign trained’. He is a S’porean.
Foreign-trained does not equal foreigner.
I know many S’porean doctors who got their degrees in UK or Ireland.
I was just in TTSH (tan tock seng) yesterday with my brother who sprained his back (also recurring slip disc), he got into A&E and was warded for observations.
I visited him with soup from my mom (long story) and his doctor attending to him as a Filipino young man (really, just a kid)…I asked him…
1. What is wrong with his back? – Dont Know, could be anything…
2. What did the X Ray showed? – Nothing (right now, he is looking at me bright eyed and waiting for next Q&A)
3. Why the X-Ray showed nothing? So it is nothing to do with the spine? – Yes, it seems like nothing spine related, but will require MRI to see more.
4. So when can we do the MRI? – We will make appt for him with our orthopedics consultants, just we can only give him painkillers now
5. OK, will you make appt for him and is the Orthopedics in TTSH famous and good? – I dont know, the nurse will make appt for him.
6. Should I get him a pair of crutches, will this help him, he can hardly walk – That is up to you people
7. Where can I get these, and does the pharmacy sell these? I dont know where to get them and I do not know if the pharmacy sells them
8. Can I get them outside and do you know where is nearest place to get them, he can hardly walk and he needs immediately! – I dont know, I am not local, so I dont know where to buy them
9. Do you know roughly how much ? I dont know…
10 mins later, I asked a local nurse (the one that made the appt for us) – her reply…”It is common to not see anything on the X Ray and it is a good thing as it is now not bone (spine) related, we can only know more after a MRI, which the Orthopedic Consultant can order, if he deems necessary. For now, it is important to get him crutches, which you can buy from a pharmacy called Assisted Living in the shopping mall connected to TTSH, called Square 2.”
Even though the responses came from a doctor and a nurse, the nurse was helpful and understand the pains of the patient – w/o my 20 questions, she was able to proactively anticipate my questions and give me helpful advice.
I am not being a bastard here, that Filipino doctor just dont give a flying f*** about my brother – the local nurse spoke hokkien to us and gave us a peace of mind.
A Tan
Sorry I think we are talking about the source of the training – traditional source and Non Traditional Source.
The “traditional source” doctors means doctors that have gone to universities in UK, Australia, USA or Canada.
NTS doctors are mainly from India, Philippines, China and maybe Malaysia.
I think if Indonesians or Philippinos are trained in from our traditional source countries (UK, Australia, Canada and USA) they are not considered as NTS doctors.
But NTS doctors are the talents we are looking for aren’t they? Except if we had a minimum wage our doctors would not have to compete with these “cheaper, faster and better” imports.
It is the lower wage and unskilled workers that we mustn’t import.
My son after 2+ years in the NS was not given a place at NUS for medical training while I understand many FTs got in and were paying only like 5% more fees. Seeing my son’s passion for medicine, I had no heart to disappoint him and so am paying for him to study in Australia where I am paying between S$60K to $70K per year depending on the exchange rate.
He is now in his 5th year and my retirement funds are all but almost busted.I cannot understand why this Government has not thought for the ambitions of its people. HELP THE FTs by all means as it is a win-win for the country. BUT never forget that the citizens will not feel happy about being bypassed for the opportunities given to FTs.
The least the Govt should have done is to give a token – such as tax exemptions to its people who send their kids overseas to study because some local places had been given to FTs. I know this is not the PAP’s logic. They don’t think this way!! I don’t expect any answers from them anyway.
what happened was “very bad”
we can’t “predict” what the doctor will say
but not to worry, everything is under control
Let’s move on.
For years they denied locals the chance to study medicine, rationalizing that medical school can only be attended by the brightest in Singapore. Now they have to resort to hiring foreigners with 3rd world education to become doctors.
The same goes for other local degree courses, only bright ones should attend. Whereas 3rd world countries are churning out graduates and winning over locals for jobs.
It is an open secret for the past 25 years medical & law faculty in local U was almost a no entry to local ethnic Indians.PAP’s justification was that there far too many Indians in this field.Therefore ,bright Indians were channelled to engineering and others.
For some reasons Indian parents preferred medicine & law as their top choice.Similarly with Malaysian Indians as well.
Now,PAP imports foreign doctors from questionable background.Filipino doctors,pharmacist and etc top the list almost bordering on quack practice…
PAP social engineering had gone horribly wrong.
Great, now we got to build a tower of Babel, not forgetting foreign nurses. soon, we will see more medical mishaps like the recent incidents.
To 坡仔哥哥
you should try TCM, it’s very effective for sprained back, rather than communicate with a doctor who know less than a nurse
This govt is simply incompetent. I can’t even trust them to help my grandchild to cross the street. Why do they need to bring in 1.8 million foreigners just to manage a small population base of about 3 million local Singaporeans.
Call themselves scholars and top brains. My foot.I call them stupid and incompetent. They have ruined the country with gross mis-management of just about everything they put their tiny brains into.
Maybe we should consider Obama after he leaves his presidency to become the next Prime Minister. He gets 5 times his current salary and can depend on 2DPMs, 1 SM , 1 MM and lots of ministers with portfolios to do his work besides having the services of the entire machinery of highly paid civil servants. No need to talk to his citizens. Just use SPH as the mouth piece.
Wow. Best job in the world.
I remember some years back, it was the Govt who cut
the intake of medical students at the university, fearing
the oversupply of doctors,
Now, I see there is no admission this mistake and as
usual, the solution for them is bring in ‘ foreign talents’
A sense of deja wu of the stop-at-2 policy of the 60s & 70s.
What else is new, pap lacks the foresight.. Few years ago, pap actually imposed a cap on the number of students to be admitted to the local uni’s medical faculty…
And now what happen? same as 2 is enough policy..
For local students it is hard to get into medicine.Many with As can’t fufill their ambitions.The govt prefer to import foreign doctors to suppress local singaporeans from be coming elite.Pap scare many locals are too brilliant and resulting pap people looks stupid.
The number of female doctors were aslo deliberately restricted for no valid reasons.
Females and males are good at different facets and should therefore be good at certain aspects of medicines than male docs.
Some smart folks have had stunted thinking and I am quite sure the crazy FT concept is one of them…just wait and see….but whne you’re cornered,just DON’T BLAME US! We have had enough!!!
What on earth is wrong with Filipino medical professionals? Seriously – the Philippines exports medical personnel the world over. I’m sure we can grouse about the woes of local medical students without insinuating that Filipino doctors gleefully dose our frail, aged parents with random amounts of random medicines.
It is the same with other degree courses, PAP social engineering gone wrong. While other countries are arming their youths with degrees, our government is restricting degrees to top 10% of cohort. The rest are to go for poly. As a result, many young adults’ potential is not fulfilled. They lose out in career prospects with foreigners due to lack of a degree. I see many Indian and China nationals with degrees from their countries earning 5, 6k a month while local poly students stuck at $2k assistant jobs.
Nowadays doctor’s pay are not as good as housing agents, stock brokers and insurance agents. Worst is for the GP who own their own practice as most of them have lost the patients to the GOVERNMENT’S Polyclinic. The market is very distorted by all the Government intervention, such as subsidising polyclinc patients arbitarily, import huge number of foreigner as doctors from questionable sources.
In no time, you have a country with Foreign-Trained Foreign Doctors and Foreign-Trained Foreign Nurses treating Singaporeans. Foreign-Trained Foreign Lawyers dealing the legal issues for Singaporeans. Foreign-Trained Foreign Teachers teaching Singaporean kids. Foreign-Trained Foreign Workers serving as construction workers, in retail shops, and in hawker centers.
But that’s not a problem because even Singaporeans are made up of foreigners. The only thing native is the land call Singapore. This is what I call a real foreign invasion.
hi folks,
hold on to your horses. PAP is diverting the people’s “anger” away from them and onto foreign worker/talent. Pitting FT against Sg. To give themselves breathing space. Do not fall for this.
i say again – do not fall for this !
Weather you are local or foreign, we are all workers. We may be exploited and racing each other to the bottom.
Singaporeans are not against foreign workers per se. We are against the rampant policy of this government.
Remember – local or foreign, WE ARE ALL WORKERS.
The problem of the shortage of doctors in Singapore is created by PAP government that restricts the number of medical students in the past !!! PAP pays themselves exceptional high salary in the excuse of their exceptional talent but can still make an obvious mistake to create this problem i.e. the increasing demand for doctors due to aging population and also increasing the population size. This clearly show that PAP ministers are not exceptional talent and therefore can be replaced!
Same situation at KK children hospital .
A lot of foreign indian doctors.
In the 6 bedder ward. 4 of 6 children are non-singaporean.
Only my child and the other girl is singaporean.
Sometimes i wonder whether we are in singapore or some foreign land?…