Why should I bother getting our readers involved in the issue of training doctors? Medical students who graduate from medical colleges enroll in a training program by the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCHS) for four years or more and then become consultant doctors. This is an important issue. It concerns you. Doctors who have finished the SCHS training program and become consultant doctors are the ones who will treat you or your children, give you prescriptions, or operate on your parents. I wrote an article five years ago asking the SCHS to reconsider its training policies and programs, which do not necessarily turn trainee doctors into highly qualified and professional experts. I want to make some things clear before delving into this issue. The commission has played a pioneering role in issuing licenses for medical and healthcare practitioners and preventing those who have fake medical degrees from entering the medical sector. This criticism of the commission's clinical training programs, though severe, aims to make it improve its performance and programs. Unfortunately, the commission still insists on holding annual theoretical examinations for resident doctors. If the doctor passes the exam, he advances to the next level. Please note that we are talking about a practical science which requires practice i.e. medicine. We are not talking about sociology, philosophy or religion. A doctor who passes the exam will advance to the next level without being subjected to any other form of monitoring or evaluation. A training-program supervisor will fill out a form and give it to the doctor indicating whether he has been successful. Whether such forms are filled out with complete honesty is something we do not know. I would like the commission to answer the following questions: Why is the passing percentage for some doctors from certain areas zero? Why does the commission want to get more recognition for its training programs, which do not qualify competent doctors? Does the commission care about holding training programs on clinical examination skills or just care about holding courses on how to formulate the questions of its examinations? It seems that the commission is obsessed with traditional evaluation methods. Why is it that a trainee doctor who becomes an intern with, for example, rheumatoid consultant doctors for two months ends up learning nothing? Why does his skills not improve? He still cannot examine joints; he cannot tell the difference between arthritis inside the joint or on an area near the joint. Some of the trainees do not even know how to register the complete history of a patient who suffers from arthritis. Doesn't the commission have enough funds to develop and modernize? What happens to the thousands and thousands of riyals the trainees pay every year in registration fees? The other thing that I do not understand and which is pathetic, in my opinion, is the final examinations of internal medicine students. The commission still insists on following traditional old methods in evaluating doctors. In addition, the people who put these questions on paper tend to write those questions that they like. There is no unified criteria. If a doctor fails, then who should we blame? If the doctor keeps failing, is it because of him or the way questions have been written?
