Medical interns to do pre-entry exams before deployment

Kampala, (UG): The Ministry of Health has finalized drafting a policy that will see all medical interns subjected to standardised pre-entry internship exams before deployment to various hospitals across the country.

The new plan according to the Ministry of Health officials will come in handy in addressing public concerns over the deteriorating quality of medical interns from training institutions.

Dr Diana Atwine, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, speaking of the new policy said this will help greatly in streamlining medical training and improving service delivery in the health sector.

“We are looking at it from the time the candidate is selected, admitted in institutions of training and how the training must be done. The requirements for the entry are going to be revised. We are also looking at numbers because now, we allowed so many students and when you have quantitative, normally you lose the qualitative,” Dr Atwine said.

“So, we want to focus on the policies bringing back the quality of the product that we produce as a country but also specifically on training. We are also discussing on the exams, how they’re going to be structured on assessment of the quality of the trainees. All those are key areas that we are going to look at,” she added.

“A medical trainee is not like an accountant or an engineer who is starting the machine. Medical training is targeted to take care of the human life. We must be very explicit on the quality of the trainees that are being sent out,” the PS emphasized.

Dr Atwine was yesterday presenting her keynote address at the ongoing Joint Annual Scientific Health Conference 2023, taking place at the Imperial Royal Hotel in Entebbe. The conference is under the theme, “Advancing health opportunities and innovation in the face of emerging and re-emerging global health challenges”.

Dr Atwine talked of weaknesses in supervision both at training time but also at practice time saying they also want to improve this under the new draft proposals through standardisation. She added that this will be done through collaboration so that the numbers that are trained are budgeted for and well supported.

In June, the Health Ministry said it needed Shs80.4 billion to facilitate the deployment of 1,901 medical interns, who were then still waiting to undertake the training and 4,000 pre-intern medical doctors who are about to finish their studies.

Medical Workers Body Speaks

When contacted for a comment on the proposed policy, Dr Herbert Luswata, the Secretary General of the Uganda Medical Association (UMA) welcomed the move by the government to have the internship policy in place but challenged the type of exams medical students will be exposed to.

“If they have decided to go ahead and work on the internship policy, that is a good thing because it is very necessary. However, the internship exams are not the best exams we need, especially those doing medical courses,” Dr Luswata said, adding: “The best way to regulate numbers should be having entry exams into medical schools and national exit exams when medical students are finishing school.”

“The reason being that the pre-entry exams into internship after someone has already graduated and is a doctor is catastrophic. When someone already graduated and subject him or her to a pre-internship exam, when they fail, they are bound to go and start practising without licences,” he said.

According to Dr Luswata, “the ministry has the responsibility through the Uganda Medical and Practitioners Council to supervise the medical schools through the Pharmaceutical Society of Uganda and the Nursing Council to ensure that they have all the requirements for training, including medical equipment and lecturers, among others, to have a good medical school.”

The new plan for medical interns exams is contained in a new draft policy that has already been discussed internally and will soon be forwarded to the Cabinet and later to the Parliament for consideration.