Opinion
Medical Internship: Fuss and Fact
By Dr. Ouma Oluga.
Focused Professional Practice Evaluation, often 12 months, is done for several reasons such as to ascertain or award privileges for medical practice. It basically spotlights competence and behavior.
Medical Internship is regarded worldwide as a framework for Evaluating Professional Practice in a focused way.
Practice means these interns have to see patients and perform procedures. Now that is serious. Practice is real work – a lot of technical and complex work that initiates the perofessional into a world of doctor(ship). In our case in Kenya, 27% of all medical work is done by medical interns. You will never notice who is an intern and who is not. It is not education. It is not training. And it is not volunteering. And it is not supervision per se (entirely). 90% of intern work is unsupervised at the time they deliver the service. They are alone with patients, making life and death decisions. Those decisions are evaluated not less than 8 hours later or when the intern calls on the superior.
What an internship policy should do is to define the conditions for which an intern can make decisions by self and those for which the intern MUST call a superior. Internship policy should not talk about pay. So do we understand the difference between evaluation of performance by specialists and supervision or training or volunteering?
The term medical intern has several nomenclature in different countries. In USA, they are house officers. In UK, they are junior drs. In Kenya, Public Service Commission/Department of Personnel Management used to call ‘us’ Medical Officer 2 or Dental Officer 2 or Pharmacist 2. Much of Africa calls them interns. A term not existent in developed world as far medical career is concerned.
In August 2016 when I led the development of first ever the schemes of service for doctors, we retained the names Medical/Dental/Pharmacist 2 as appearance on the payslip. The IPPD – which is the official Kenya Government pay structure – has the terms Medical/Dental/Pharmacist Officer 2. Medical Intern does not appear on the payslip.
For the CBA, We were very clear about the term intern just so that no one mischeaviously plays around it in the future. And 7 years have proven us right. Yet we also tied the payment evidence to the naming used in scheme of services. The PSC graduated the schemes sometime 2019 and called them career guidelines. Still retaining the temr Medical/Dental/Pharmacist Officer 2.
To summarize, you get no certificate after completion of internship and no qualification more than what you got in med school after completion. But if evaluated positively you get registered (permanently in the roll), not licensed. The interns are already licensed. And every year every doctor must be licensed anyway as long as they are still practising. So internship gains you entry for registration as a doctor.
Let us say more about licensing. Licensing is a temporary permit to make medical decisions. And yes it is temporary for all doctors. Whether you are a neurosurgeon or an intern. It lasts exactly 12 months in all countries on earth. Interns get theirs too for one year. Not different from any doctor.
Medical Internship is healthcare regulation in all definitions. And medical internship is work. It is labour and it is service in all definitions. It is employment. In the USA for example, hospitals get reimbursed by government based on numbers of house officers and residents they have.
There is need for us to have a deeper view around what makes healthcare regulation. And what constitutes labour. Internship is both. We must fulfill both obligations.
The writer is a former KMPDU Secretary General.
Kenya Insights allows guest blogging, if you want to be published on Kenya’s most authoritative and accurate blog, have an expose, news TIPS, story angles, human interest stories, drop us an email on [email protected] or via Telegram
Investigations8 hours ago
KETRACO CEO Advert Marred By Controversies As Fears Grow That Kipkemoi Kibias Is A Predetermined Candidate
News23 hours ago
I Will Bribe Every Judge in Town- MP Jack Wamboka
Investigations1 day ago
KNH ON THE BRINK: How Corruption, Revenue Plunder and State Neglect Are Destroying Kenya’s Flagship Hospital
Business1 day ago
Receivers In TransCentury Sh6B KRA Tax Arrears Are Biased And Must Be Removed, COFEK Claims
Investigations1 day ago
The Man Behind the Badge: How Prof. Erastus Kanga Turned Kenya’s Premier Wildlife Agency into a Theatre of Corruption, Fear and Impunity
News2 days ago
City Lawyer Conrad Maloba Arrested Over Fake Ambulance Fraud
Investigations2 days ago
How Little Known KwikBet Leveraged Stolen Kenyans Data To Build Its Empire
Investigations2 days ago
THE FIXER IN THE FILE ROOM: How Parliamentary Health Committee Clerk Adan Gindicha Cleared Mediheal Hospital of Organ Harvesting Claims Despite Mounting Evidence
Business3 days ago
Nairobi Freezes Binance Accounts in Sweeping Anti-Fraud Crackdown as Global Scandal Record Haunts World’s Largest Crypto Exchange
Investigations3 days ago
EXCLUSIVE: Odibets Bought Stolen Data From Millions Of Kenyans
Investigations3 weeks ago
Forged Legacy: How Kaplan and Stratton’s Peter Gachuhi Is Accused of Faking a Top AG’s Will as State Claims Damning Evidence
Investigations3 weeks ago
Inside Details Of Sh78 Billion Fraud in KPC’s Mombasa-Nairobi Line 5 Pipeline Project That Has Continued To Bleed The Country
Business3 weeks ago
Sold And Abandoned: How Diageo and Asahi Are Locking Kenya’s EABL Minority Shareholders Out Of East Africa’s Biggest Corporate Heist
Business3 weeks ago
Poison at the Pump: How Kenya’s Fuel Marking System May Be Exposing Millions to Cancer-Causing Chemicals
Business4 weeks ago
THE HANDSHAKE THAT BECAME A NOOSE: How Tuju’s Alleged Intimate Access to EADB’s Yeda Apopo Produced a Sh294 Million Deal With No Written Contract, and Why That Trust Destroyed an Empire
News2 weeks ago
The Lawyer at the Centre of Kenya’s State Machine: Eric Gumbo, the AG’s Bypassed Office, and the Half-Billion-Shilling Question
Business3 weeks ago
How Firm Linked To Mombasa Tycoon Jaffer Was Allowed To Import Fuel At Bloated Price And Set To Make Billions In Profits From Iranian War Crisis In Kenya
Investigations3 weeks ago
THE ZAKHEM-ECOBANK MACHINE: How Kenya’s Courts Were Weaponised to Drain a State Corporation of Over KES 78 Billion
Investigations3 weeks ago
The Teflon Company: How Gulf Energy’s Insiders Built Billions on Kenya’s Fuel, and Walked Away Clean
News4 weeks ago
The Debt They Would Not Pay: How Standard Group Ducked Sh50 Million In Regulatory Fee For Years, Then Called It A Witch-Hunt
-
Business1 week agoKenyan Motorists Stare At Possible Engine Damage And Heavy Losses As Report Confirms Substandard Fuel In Circulation
-
Business1 week agoTHE FUEL CABAL: How Mohamed Jaffer, a KPC Insider, and a Ministry Official Are Alleged to Have Manufactured Kenya’s Worst Petroleum Crisis in Three Years, While Kenyans Burned
-
Business1 week agoGetting Away With It: How Kenya’s Most Politically Connected Fuel Company Gulf Energy Is Pocketing Billions While Rival Firms Face Public Wrath
-
Business2 weeks agoHow Safaricom Could Sell You Out To KRA
-
News2 weeks agoThe Kewota Racket: How Kenya’s Female Teachers Are Being Bled Dry
-
Business1 week agoSugar Empire in the Dock: How Kibos’s Mombasa Refinery Landed 1,481 Phantom Tonnes at the Port — and Why Nine Government Agencies Are Now Watching Its Every Move
-
Business1 week agoTotalEnergies Moves to Sue TikToker for Sh10 Million Over Contaminated Fuel Claim as Kenya’s Petroleum Sector Burns
-
Investigations3 days agoEXCLUSIVE: Odibets Bought Stolen Data From Millions Of Kenyans