New MUST surgery bachelor to recruit locally

The local government yesterday approved a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery course at the Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST), which course planners say will recruit predominantly from the local population. The aim, according to Dr Billy Chan, director of MUST’s Center of Excellence for Medical Professional Development, is to train a cohort of young professionals to address medical issues that are prevalent in Macau.

“We managed to get the approval from the government today after years of working toward it,” Chan told the Times yesterday. “This is almost a historical moment. To produce doctors here, we have to nurture young people. We are sending the message that we can have these courses [in Macau] – and it’s exciting.”

The course will start small, recruiting between 35 and 50 students at its inception, most of them coming from local high schools. It will not initially focus on the recruitment of overseas students.

“We are focused on training Macau professionals. If we wanted to have international students then this course would be much larger. We want to produce good students for the local community,” explained Chan.

With English and Chinese as the languages of instruction, the course will last for six years, including one year of internship. Chan says that organizers hope the course can start in time for the next academic year this fall.

Not all medical professionals in the city are equally enthused about the course.

Rui Furtado, former president of Association of Macau Portuguese-Speaking Physicians, expressed reservations about the capacity of Macau to recruit physicians with the ability to teach, given the difficulty in hiring qualified medical practitioners to work at the local hospitals.

Furtado also noted that Macau lacks the diversity to have such a degree since local patients don’t exhibit enough pathologies to set up a medical school. “A medical degree is not made with patients suffering from flu or pneumonia,” he told Radio Macau. “It is made with patients with diverse pathologies.”

Chan disagrees. He told the Times that there are plenty of qualified medical practitioners in the city and course planners have the ability to “cherry-pick” from abroad to fill any gaps.

Moreover, he said that the students will be “instructed [in particular] to handle issues that are prevalent in Macau, like respiratory conditions, heart attacks and strokes, which are also common in Asia.”

The latest degree is the fourth medicine-related bachelor at the educational institution, following the Bachelor of Biomedicine, the Bachelor of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Bachelor of Pharmacy in Chinese Medicine.