Foreign Doctors in Public Hospitals

Er Dr Lee Bee Wah asked the Minister for Health with the engagement of foreign doctors in public hospitals (a) what due diligence is being done to ensure that the doctors recruited are qualified and meet our local standards of medical practice; (b) whether the Ministry has received any negative feedback on the practices of any of these foreign doctors in the past two years; and (c) whether are there plans to increase the intake of medical trainees at the National University of Singapore to meet the increasing demand for doctors.

Mr Gan Kim Yong: Foreign doctors seeking medical registration in Singapore are required to meet the following criteria for registration:

Page: 776

a) Possess registrable basic or postgraduate qualifications recognised by the Singapore Medical Council (SMC);

b) Have been in active clinical practice;

c) Are certified to be in good standing by the relevant authorities overseas; and,

d) Have an offer of employment with an accredited healthcare institution in Singapore.

Such doctors are deemed to have met the standards required of them to practise in Singapore. The list of registrable basic medical qualifications is based on the Second Schedule of the Medical Registration Act. Currently, there are 160 medical schools listed in the Second Schedule. Registrable postgraduate medical qualifications are based on a list of qualifications and training recognised by the Singapore Medical Council.

Foreign doctors are required to work, initially, only in institutions that are accredited by SMC, such as all public healthcare institutions and a few private healthcare institutions, for a stipulated period, where they are subjected to SMC's supervisory framework. The objective is to help them acclimatise to the local healthcare system for patients' safety. They are supervised by fully registered doctors, are regularly assessed and their performance reported to SMC.

Seven foreign doctors had their registration cancelled due to poor performance over the past three years (two in 2009, three in 2010, and two in 2011). Based on the total number of foreign doctors registered as at end of the year, the cancellation rate was, on average, about 0.2% annually over the same period (0.2% in 2009, 0.2% in 2010 and 0.1% in 2011).

We also receive feedback on general service quality of doctors, in areas such as poor communication ability, lack of courtesy, etc. Proportionally, the number of complaints against foreign doctors is not higher than the overall rate for all doctors.

These foreign doctors play an important role in our healthcare sector by supplementing locally trained doctors to meet our growing healthcare needs. Nevertheless, we have been steadily increasing the pipeline of locally trained doctors. Student intake at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine for 2011 was 280, compared to 230 in 2005. We anticipate the number to grow to 300 this year. Further, we have established the NUS-Duke Graduate Medical School in 2007 with an annual intake of about 50 this year, and will be starting the new Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in 2013 with an inaugural intake of 50 students. At steady state, these three medical schools are expected to train a total of about 500 doctors annually, which is almost double the number of current graduates.