LETTERS: We need special standards for clinical officers

Editor, RE: “Parliament moves to probe three-year non-deployment of medical officers” (The New Times, November 11). Looks like a problem of discordant policy implementation. Rwanda medical profession is regularised/supervised by the Rwanda Medical and Dentist Council. It goes without saying that there is absolute need to monitor/regularise the sector as one that is dealing with people’s lives. Part of the council’s mandate is to ensure the right standards are adhered to when it comes to training. I think it is common knowledge that the medical profession is one of the most rigorous and arduous training programmes on the planet—at least 7 years academic training and 1-3 year medical internship positions. In the US, it can take 10 years to be a fully qualified doctor. The academic curriculum itself is very rigorous, and the joke when I was in university was that once a medical student enters university, they head straight to the library and never come out till the semester is over. It is only right that the Ministry of Health keeps a very close eye on the academic curriculum and to scrutinise foreign medical degrees. This nails the problem right in the centre. When the new ‘clinical medicine’ programme was approved in 2011, was it certified and okayed by the medical council? My assumption is this would not have passed the medical doctor stamp due to the academic curriculum itself. Doctors enter medical school due to their excellence/high grades in lower schools. Imagine someone who has been trained for a 3-year nursing diploma then upgrades to a 2-year bachelors programme and automatically becomes a medical doctor. This logically seems out of place. My guess is these are clinical officers’ accreditation (they are highly needed to provide first level support, especially in district and lower level hospitals) and they usually don’t qualify as doctors. The ball is now in Rwanda Medical Council’s court; to address this issue and come up with appropriate accreditation standards for clinical officers if they are not in place or enforce them for this group of highly needed medical skill. Kigali Girl

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LETTERS: We need special standards for clinical officers