How to start a medical school from a scratch
I set a very challenging target in 2010 for the Vice Chancellor of SEGi University and his team to establish a medical school within a year. Vice Chancellor, Professor Muhamad Awang and Founding Dean of the Medical Faculty,Professor Atiya Ab Sallam and their team succeeded in delivering the “baby” on time.
We met with similar challenges when setting up the pharmacy, dentistry and optometry schools. These are critical courses and experienced staff are hard to come by.
Recently, Professor Atiya wrote a very passionate and motivating email to his colleagues to galvanize their continued support and contributions to make the Medical Faculty not only good but great.
Professor Atiya is kind enough to give his consent to share his words of wisdom that spur all the recipients into actions. His message also covered concisely the challenges faced (and still being faced) by his team in starting a medical school from a scratch.
It also charted the events and strategy that has led to the success in getting the medical school established. More importantly he described the strategic collaboration forged with the Ministry of Health and the strategy to put in a revamped and progressive approach of the integrated medical curriculum for the medical school.
I am sure readers will be moved by the engaging and passionate manner in which this academic, medical doctor and medical educator has put his message across.
Professor Atiya’s passionate message to his colleagues reads:
“Dear esteemed Colleague,
The year 2012 is coming to a close and with God’s blessing we can still look forward to another year with new hope.
I feel it is my duty to write this short message to remind all of us how we have all come together and found a common ground to serve humanity.
First I would like to take this opportunity to provide a historical perspective on how in a short period of exactly three years this day that Faculty of Medicine come into existence in a place called SEGi University. It is vital for us to understand its development as the school grows.
I remember very well in late December 2010, I got a call from our Vice Chancellor, Professor Emeritus Dr. Muhamad Awang, a day after we completed our holiday cruise on the Royal Caribbean. I was already then happily retired three years from my beloved University of Malaya where I spent a total of nearly three decades from being a student to a teacher. But never in my life have I desired to become a Dean. Nevertheless, I got inspired by this man whom I never knew, but by grace of God, someone I came to know had informed him that I was available to be hired as a mercenary!
I took the challenge and it was clear to the management that my term was to start a medical school. I was committed to get it started and as being told to me by the VC, that Dato’ Seri Clement Hii wanted to have a medical school in ‘business’ in less than one year. I was well aware of the difficulties to start a new school in the face of a mushrooming of medical schools. Personally, I have a great reservation of Malaysia having more medical schools in this country. But then I thought if I have a passion to do it well and can make a difference for this one, why not?
The initial journey was tough; I was given one administrative executive and a personal driver for the first five months to figure out what to do in the next ten months to build a medical school and recruit the first batch of medical students from a scratch. The good thing was that the curriculum was already made available to me and the arrangement was that the students do two years pre-clinical in Kota Damansara and three years of clinical studies in India in partnership with one of the medical schools in Chennai. But, being an ex-military and academic I’m not totally impressed with the arrangement. During this period, VC and the Secretary of Malaysian Medical Council, Dr. Wan Mazlan had been instrumental in guiding me. Every morning I will have a morning prayer in the VC’s office and with his brewed German coffee we planned on each numbered days in earnest. We finally agreed that we will adopt a more modern approach to the medical curriculum for our home-grown programme and do away with the 2 + 3 arrangement. For the curriculum we decided to adopt the IIUM version of an integrated curriculum. With good fortune, the Ministry of Health was very kind enough to give us two government hospitals in Teluk Intan, Perak and Sibu in Sarawak and one spare in Miri also in Sarawak for us to train our boys and girls. The place grows from day to day and by June 2010 we had five academic staff with one senior Medical Laboratory Technician (MLT) on board to chart the progress of the new-born medical school.
We were inspired by the commitment from every department that made us feel confident we would achieve what we planned for. We had our first faculty meeting in June 2010 and we never looked back since then. Our programme was approved by the MQA/MMC panel in September 2010 and we recruited the first batch comprising of 25 students in November 2010. The trial and tribulations were paid off and we were united in our approach. We believe in team work and we put aside personal differences. We debated, argued and quarreled, but it was done in a most professional manner. We tried to sort out our internal concerns and problems within the family and only sought advice with upstairs if deemed necessary.
Looking back, I was amazed at how things evolved over the short duration. We admitted, we worked very hard and were committed to fulfil the dream of Dato’ Seri Clement Hii to have a medical school. Personally, I feel confident that we a have a good system in place for us to move forward to being a GOOD to a GREAT medical school. I also believe that we are in the right path, judging from the positive reports for our First MBBS Professional Examination held in October 2012 from our four external examiners (namely from University of London, University of Malaya, University of Science Malaysia and International Islamic University of Malaysia).
Definitely, we face great challenges ahead of us. And we are not done yet until our first batch of medical students graduate.
For 2013, we hope to consolidate and strengthen our curriculum delivery for Phase 1. At the same time we need to venture into research activities so stay relevant as a University. The main task for the Dean’s Office will be to plan and implement the Clinical Phase in our site campuses in Hospital Teluk Intan in Perak and Hospital Sibu in Sarawak. We can take pride in that our facility in Hospital Teluk Intan is the first public-private partnership where a private institution’s facility is set up within the premises of the Ministry of Health. And we hope to do the same with Hospital Sibu. This is only possible because of the support and strong commitment from all stakeholders.
Therefore, I would like to end this message with a call for all of us to join hands with me to continue and strive for being GOOD to GREAT together. And let us remind ourselves to be guided by the ten good universal values that we want our students to emulate.
Dr. Atiya Ab Sallam
Founding Dean / Professor
Faculty of Medicine
SEGI University
Kota Damansara”
Founding Dean / Professor
Faculty of Medicine
SEGI University
Kota Damansara”
Professor Atiya Ab Sallam is confident that he and his team has a good system in place to move forward to being a GOOD to a Great medical school.
Source: http://clementhii.com/how-to-start-a-medical-school-from-a-scratch/