Malaysia O&G Knowledge Assessment for the masters in obstetrics & gynaecology Malaysia programme

It has been the desire of the Director General of Health and the Academy of Medicine to have a common entrance exam to enter the Masters Programme. The problem is that the candidates have to register with any one of the universities to sit for such an examination and this poses a lot of logistics problem.

It is also noticed that In recent years, the quality of the postgraduates in the Malaysian Conjoint Masters Obstetrics & Gynaecology programme has deteriorated markedly. Despite the stringent methods in choosing the senior candidates who have completed at least 3 years of medical service and having interviews on all the applicants that are eligible by senior members of the O&G fraternity in the Government service and universities, many of the students perform below expectations. The Conjoint Board is of the opinion that the wrong cohort of students are being chosen into the programme.

A number of the candidates that have been selected into the programme quit the course hardly a few months into the training, depriving others of a place in the programme.

The Part 1 examination has a high failure rate despite the basic questions that have been set by the panel examiners. Candidates have to sit several times before passing the examination and a number have to leave the programme after exhausting all their chances. These multiple attempts will distract the candidates from concentrating fully on their clinical training programme and to start their clinical studies.

In the Part II examination, the glaring weakness that was seen in each examination was the high failure rate in the Theory section. It indicates that the candidates lack self reading and did not take extra effort to upgrade their clinical and theoretical knowledge. In the clinical examination, the candidates also lack the basic clinical knowledge expected of a clinician.

All these indicate the lack of commitment in the students chosen into the programme. We need to produce quality and not quantity in the Malaysian Masters O&G programme. In view of this, the Conjoint Board (which comprises of the examination Board members of 4 participating Universities, the Senior Government O&G Consultants and the Academy of Medicine) have decided to organize an Entrance Examination which the candidate must pass before he or she can be eligible for the Interview for selection into the programme. Only those who are really committed will apply, thus ensuring a dedicated group of Masters students into the Malaysian Conjoint O&G Masters programme.

Prof. Dr. Zainul Rashid M. Razi, Conjoint Board, Masters O &G Malaysia.
O&G Department, Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia,
Jalan Yaacob Latiff, Cheras, Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia O&G Knowledge Assessment