Dalli on changes in health service

Social Policy Minister John Dalli said yesterday in Parliament that one of the reasons to which he attributed the current shortage of doctors was the fact that the university entry platform for the medical course was too high, certainly higher than that for any other profession. Accessibility to learning should be more open, so that the number of medical students would remain constant or even go up.

Another problem was that last year the UK had changed the qualification parameters for doctors' specialisation, to the effect that they must follow their post-graduate courses in UK. This invariably meant that graduates headed for UK as soon as possible to complete their post-graduate studies.

Mr Dalli, who was answering a supplementary parliamentary question by Labour MP Noel Farrugia, said he had had talks with the British High Commissioner on the problem. Only last month, about those talks and the resultant agreement, a foundation course was opened to allow graduates to follow specialisation here and still be recognised by the UK. Out of 22 doctors who had graduated in 2008, only five had still decided to do post-graduate studies in the UK.

Going on to the present malaise with the Medical Association of Malta, Mr Dalli said the government maintained that the utilisation of professional personnel - not just doctors - should always be closely analysed.

It was true that at certain times, especially in the afternoons, there were not enough doctors to adequately service the needs of health centres, even liberally allowing 15 minutes for each patient. On the other hand, the number of doctors at night in health centres were triple the requirements, showing the need for better utilisation of human resources.

This, Mr Dalli said, was the crux of the current problems. The health service must be manned according to patients', not the care giver's needs.

There was a similar problem regarding pharmacists. It should not take a qualified pharmacist to pack pills into containers and label them. Nor should qualified nurses be utilised as clerks, with allowances for doing clerical work.

These practices must change for the sustainability of the health sector, said Mr Dalli. Nobody could define the word "free", yet the demand for free health services was growing every day. With the ongoing changes in techniques and technology, the delivery of health services needed to change, and people should be taught about these aspects.

It was very important to better organise delivery structures to ensure a better health service. Asked by Mr Farrugia if the government had a time frame to address these issues, Mr Dalli said they were already being addressed. Once guidelines had been adopted, they would be filtered through intensive dialogue with the people and stakeholders.

Mr Dalli said he believed profoundly in dialogue and change. The value of this had recently been seen in the favourable outcome of the rent law reforms in the House standing committee for the consideration of Bills.

Rather than being confrontational, he had gone for dialogue and consensus, and the Bill had been agreed to.