Twenty trainer coordinators will be given their letters of appointment in the coming days as the government makes a concerted effort to keep Maltese doctors on home soil.
Sixteen coordinators have already been selected to help graduate doctors specialise in Malta, sparing them the cost of travelling overseas. This enables them to carry out their studies while providing a service in Malta.
Medical students recently expressed concern over the number of doctors leaving the island, saying that up to 20 of the 55 final-year medical students planned to leave after their graduation, exacerbating the medical brain drain.
Over the years a number of graduate doctors have opted to move overseas, due to a shortage of training opportunities in Malta coupled with the attraction of higher salaries overseas.
This has prompted the government to draw up a curriculum to enable graduate doctors to follow specialisation courses which will range from medical to ophthalmology to intensive care and dental specialities.
The consultants were selected after a call for applications and an interviews, based on criteria set by the Specialist Accreditation Committee. As part of the job plan, consultants will be given specific times to dedicate to postgraduate training.
A spokesman for Health Parliamentary Secretary Joe Cassar said the initiative should not prevent doctors from doing overseas work. This time, however, they would only really need to do so for a few months, and not years, as is the norm.
Asked whether the government was optimistic that the initiative will stem the brain drain, the spokesman said doctors were more concerned about training than pay.
The government is taking comfort from the fact that it is now more difficult for graduate doctors to specialise in Britain.
Whereas in the past doctors could follow a two-year housemanship in their own countries and then move to the UK to specialise, doctors interested in following such postgraduate courses are now required to undergo their housemanship in the UK itself, without any guarantee of being accepted for their desired courses.
The Medical Association said that up to 50 per cent of young doctors could be leaving Malta to work abroad this year, a figure that is substantially higher than that given by Social Policy Minister John Dalli in reply to a recent parliamentary question.
Mr Dalli said that all 52 doctors who graduated from the University of Malta last year were still working in the public service. He added that there were still 29 of the 34 who graduated in 2003, 58 of the 65 from 2004, 60 of the 61 from 2005 and all 44 of those who graduated in 2006.
But MAM said that 35 per cent of Maltese doctors had sought greener pastures in the past six years or were in the process of doing so.
One comment posted on the timesofmalta.com website said that junior doctors left Malta because consultants were too busy with their private practice to have time to teach juniors.