Recruitment For Fulfilling Specialist Doctors Prioritizes Indonesian Citizens Abroad

Illustration of specialist doctors (ANTARA)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) has ensured that the acceleration program for the fulfillment of the number of specialist doctors in the country prioritizes Indonesian citizens (WNI) who are now practicing abroad.

"Essentially, we want to simplify the process of returning Indonesian citizens doctors to Indonesia. Doctors with foreign national status (WNA) are not a priority to add domestic doctors," said Head of the Communication and Public Service Bureau of the Indonesian Ministry of Health, Siti Nadia Tarmizi in Jakarta, Thursday.

He said Indonesia was experiencing a shortage of specialist doctors to equalize services to remote parts of the country.

The specialist profession needed includes 3,941 Obstetrician Gynecology doctors, to overcome the occurrence of around 300 pregnant women who died from 100,000 live births.

In addition, neonatal babies with an age range of 0-28 days are reported to have died from every 1,000 births. This figure is far above other countries, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The currently applicable Specialist Doctor Education Program (PPDS) system still requires an average of 36 years to produce the needs of obstetricians in Indonesia.

In addition to obgin services, 3,662 pediatricians are also needed, 2,581 internal medicine doctors.

With the current number of lecturers and student quotas per lecturer, the medical faculty in Indonesia is estimated to need 1.36 years to meet the needs of an obgin specialist, 2.26 years old for a pediatrician, 3.23 years old for a specialist in internal medicine.

"In principle, because our human resources are less and less equitable, so we want the transformation of referral services to be expanded, especially for catastropic services. After calculating it, it is not only a matter of infrastructure, but we also need fulfillment such as heart services, it takes 10 to 15 specialist doctors, if calculated it takes 3 to 5 years," he said.

The current efforts made by the Ministry of Health are to simplify the adaptation process of specialist Indonesian citizens who graduated abroad by simplifying procedures.

"For example, there are two or three years before the adaptation process in Indonesia has been issued, as long as adaptation is not allowed to practice, even though he needs to support his family. There are also those who have been difficult to take care of adaptation, how long he has worked in overseas hospitals, but here, he was told to go to remote areas, even though he was already a senior," he said.

The Ministry of Health is still evaluating the adaptation mechanism for Indonesian citizens abroad so that they can return to the country more easily.

Doctors with the status of foreigners, said Nadia, are allowed to practice in Indonesia as long as they meet the provisions in force in the country, one of which is through a mechanism for transferring science and technology.

"We never thought of opening a foreign practice in Indonesia before. Foreigners can practice, but part of the hospital's cooperation. He takes a foreign doctor to his health facility in Indonesia, but he can only practice there," he said.