Graduates of UG Medical programme very marketable

Aug 14, 2016 News

– Health Sciences Dean

Although a proverbial dark cloud currently hangs over the University of Guyana’s School of Medicine in terms of its international accreditation status, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Dr. Emanuel Cummings, has been unwaveringly representing the products churned out annually.
The University has for sometime been faced with the challenge of losing its international accreditation. But according to Dr. Cummings, the medical graduates of the university are very marketable.
He related recently that despite the programme is currently not accredited; territories such as Jamaica and Grenada have been seeking after graduates with Medicine degrees from UG. “They know we have lost our accreditation but they are still asking for our UG graduates,” said an informed Dr. Cummings.
In fact, in boasting about the quality of UG graduates of Medicine, he revealed that not so long ago 25 doctors wrote a specialist programme examination at the University of the West Indies Mono Campus and only three were successful. Among the successful trio, Dr. Cummings noted that a Guyanese student was the most outstanding.
“The point is that the folks in the Caribbean are well aware that we produce – high quality graduates,” the Dean amplified as he added “we may not have state-of-the-art facilities, we may not have professors teaching our classes but the quality of our graduates are very much on part with what obtains at UWI.”

Dr. Emanuel Cummings

Many graduates of the School of Medicine, according to Dr. Cummings, “are doing great things…they have done exceedingly well even in North American hospitals.”
Perhaps for this reason, a number of overseas students have also been taking advantage of the medical programme offered at UG. Just last year, about five of the 46 graduates of the programme were overseas students.
The Dean’s disclosure comes even as discussions are ongoing as to whether the medical degree issued last year is internationally recognised. According to Dr. Cummings, although the programme lost its accreditation last year this was after the medical programme would have been completed. As such, UG is arguing that the degree should be internationally recognised.
“We lost the accreditation in last year July when they were finished, so technically our students who graduated all five of their years were accredited…The problem as we see it, is that the programme was not accredited at the point of graduation. Our students would have received content that were accredited,” Dr. Cummings explained recently.
The Dean has revealed too that students who are slated to graduate this year would have essentially completed a programme that is partially internationally accredited. This is in light of the fact that four years of the programme benefited from international accreditation.
“Four-fifths of this current programme was accredited and that is the argument that we are putting up now…,” asserted Dr. Cummings.
Without international accreditation the degree would only be recognised in Guyana and graduates will be subjected to write the Caribbean Association of Medical Councils (CAMC) examination to utilise it overseas.
The School of Medicine is accredited by the Jamaica-based Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Education in Medicine and other Health Professions (CAAM-HP).
Guyana is reportedly currently on track to putting several measures in place to regain its international accreditation.
But according to the CAAM-HP website, Guyana is not the only territory that has lost international accreditation for its tertiary institution. Among the other territories that have institutions that have lost accreditation are Montserrat and Turks and Caicos.

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Caption: Dr. Emanuel Cummings

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