“Without accreditation, from 2023 medical degree will be as good as toilet paper”

Aug 09, 2017 News

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– UG’s Health Sciences Dean

 

Medical students of the University of Guyana [UG] who graduated while the School of Medicine lost its accreditation will be able to practice or even pursue post-grad studies overseas, simply by writing the exams of the desired universities.

This, however, will become a thing of the past from 2023.

This publication understands that from 2023, the decision of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates [ECFMG] will become active, and thereby require that physicians applying for the ECFMG Certification be a graduate from a medical school that has been appropriately accredited.

Established in 1956, the ECFMG is a private, nonprofit organization, headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States.

ECFMG is a world leader in promoting quality health care—serving physicians, members of the medical education and regulatory communities, health care consumers, and those researching issues in medical education and health workforce planning.

Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Dr Emmanuel Cummings, in an invited comment, yesterday admitted that the ECFMG move will have a bearing on the medical graduates of UG.

UG in 2015 had lost its accreditation but was recently able to regain same for the next four years. Those who graduated during the loss of the accreditation are able to practice here without any problems. However, those who desired to practice or pursue post-grad studies overseas were required to complete the respective territory’s medical council examination.

This, however, will not be possible from 2023, confirmed Dr. Cummings, who revealed that “without accreditation, from 2023 the University of Guyana medical degree will be as good as toilet paper.” In fact, he informed that all offshore medical schools will be subjected to this condition.

“If the programme is not accredited, you will not even qualify to write the overseas medical council exams…so accreditation will have a very important value. Without completing an accredited programme, you simply will not be allowed to write these exams; your degree will be worth nothing; it will have no value,” Dr. Cummings asserted.

UG recently regained its accreditation status from the Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Education Medicine and other Health Professions [CAAM-HP]. But since the accreditation was granted with some conditions, there is need for the state university to ensure that it works towards addressing various concerns highlighted by CAAM-HP.

Although the accreditation will be valid for four years [2017-2021], the university, during the course of those years, will have to furnish CAAM-HP with progress reports that reflect the measures being implemented to translate the concerns into strengths.

CAAM-HP has highlighted, as a concern, that the small number of university staff in certain disciplines, makes teaching precarious, and the ability to follow a research agenda difficult.

The highlighted concerns include the limited capacity of the School of Medicine to undertake scholarship and develop an effective research strategy, and the lack of an overall assessment strategy for the medical programme, to ensure reliability and validity of the assessment processes. Also, it has been highlighted that the role of the external examiner should be reviewed, and move from directly undertaking assessments to quality assuring and moderating the programme assessments.

According to the Health Sciences Dean, “the areas of strength must remain areas of strength, the areas of concern must become areas of strength and areas of weakness we have got try to address”.

In fact he added that, “accreditation is a lifelong thing; even though you are accredited it doesn’t mean that you can sit back and celebrate. It is like winning a world championship belt, you have to keep defending that belt all the time; you cannot afford to fall back.”

Even as he stressed the need for continuous measures to be implemented to ensure that UG retains its accredited status, Dr. Cummings shared his optimism that, “once we continue to be committed, I don’t see us losing our accreditation. We have to address our shortcomings and we are doing this immediately, we are not waiting.”

Dr. Cummings said that he is able to confidently make such a disclosure since, according to him, “with this Vice Chancellor, Professor Ivelaw Griffith, we will not lose our accreditation, it will never happen; we will not lose our accreditation with his leadership. He is very committed to the task…also the current Medical Director [Dr. Ronald Aaron], and myself, I don’t see we will ever fall back and we have always gotten quality students too.”

Added to this, Dr. Cummings revealed that the university has been gaining immense support from Government and other stakeholders as well.  With the existing level of support, the Dean revealed that the Faculty of Health Sciences is even eyeing accreditation for its Dental Programme. “That is my next task and we have already started our discussion with CAAM-HP for the accreditation…we are going forward all the time,” he asserted.

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