Don’t insult pioneer specialists, medical group tells critics of parallel pathway

Dr Basheer Ahamed Abdul Kareem says it is public knowledge that many parallel pathway programme graduates are easily employable and readily offered jobs in the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong.

PETALING JAYA: It is an insult to the founding fathers of the parallel pathway programme to say that the surgeons it produces are “unsafe”, the Malaysian Association for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (MATCVS) said today.

MATCVS president Dr Basheer Ahamed Abdul Kareem took aim at a recent statement by a consultant paediatrician, describing it as “insolent and insulting to the founding fathers of the programme”.

Dr Dayang Anita Abdul Aziz, formerly of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, had said that amending the Medical Act 1971 to resolve the non-recognition of parallel pathway training for specialists was wrong and unsafe.

However, Basheer said Dayang Anita’s claims were unsupported by evidence, adding that pioneer specialists in the country were also the founding fathers of the local masters programme in the early ’80s, and products of the parallel pathway programme.

“Her statement that these surgeons are ‘unsafe’ is inappropriate as it is unsubstantiated.

“Unless she can furnish clear data and statistics on morbidity and mortality to support her claim that parallel specialists are unsafe, she is obviously ditching evidence-based medicine,” he said in a statement.

He said it was public knowledge that many parallel pathway programme graduates are easily employable and readily offered jobs in the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong, and that regulators there are not gullible enough to accept unsafe specialists.

“Entry into the programme is via Membership of the Royal College examinations, which can be considered to be of global equivalency.

“The exit exam is coordinated together with the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and authorities in Singapore and Hong Kong, countries widely considered to have robust and advanced healthcare systems,” he said.

He said Dayang Anita’s assertion that the programme was started without due regard for the law was “rather foolish”, insinuating that the health ministry and government were involved in illegal activities.

Basheer, who is also the health ministry’s chief surgeon, said the parallel pathway programme was started as a joint venture by Dr Yahya Awang, the father of cardiac surgery in Malaysia.

He said stakeholders in the programme’s founding included the health ministry, the Academy of Medicine of Malaysia, the National Heart Institute, Universiti Malaya, MATCVS, and even Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), which despite its current criticism of the programme was part of it when it began in 2014.

Basheer said the cardiothoracic surgery programme under the parallel pathway was started in 2014 with the full support of authorities via the special medical committee in charge of specialist recognition long before the Malaysian Medical Council took over the job in 2017.

Besides Dayang Anita, a group of health and medical professors had also said it might not be necessary to amend the Medical Act 1971 to address the shortage of specialists in the country.

Its head, Dr Noor Hassim Ismail, said the existing laws and procedures could effectively resolve the predicament faced by graduates by allowing them to be integrated into local programmes through credit transfers or curriculum mapping.

UiTM is the only university that provides a local programme, but its first batch of cardiothoracic surgeons will only graduate in 2028.