China-trained doctors in limbo

WESTERN BUREAU:

Several Jamaican doctors, who got their training in China, are alleging that they cannot secure placements here in Jamaica for their internships despite making multiple applications. To compound their frustration, they said efforts to get Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton to intervene on their behalf have been unsuccessful.

The frustrated interns, who are now facing financial and professional distress, are of the view that the local health system has failed them.

The doctors, who did six years of training in China, starting in 2019, told The Gleaner that at least 30 of them have been left in limbo, having applied for internships at several teaching hospitals following their graduation in April. They said that instead of accepting them, hospitals such as the Kingston Public Hospital, Cornwall Regional Hospital, St Ann’s Bay Hospital, Mandeville Regional Hospital, Savanna-la-Mar Hospital, May Pen Hospital, Annotto Bay Hospital, and Black River Hospital, handed them rejection letters in August.

REJECTION LETTERS

One of the affected doctors, who asked that his name not be used for fear of discrimination, said he and his peers should have got responses to their applications by July but instead, one month later, they got the rejection letters.

“The applications were submitted between the last part of April going into the first part of May, and we were supposed to be notified by at least July to start working in the first week of August. Eventually, they reached out to us going into the latter part of August, saying that the applications have been rejected and we should reapply next year,” he said.

“Our parents have incurred a lot of debt sending their children to school, so for these people to say we should sit at home in this financial situation is rough, especially since we were expecting to have the opportunity to work, and now we are out of a job. There is also no certainty that when you reapply next year it won’t be a similar situation because there are still going to be new doctors graduating, plus a backlog with this particular set of doctors,” he added.

Another doctor, who also did not wish to be named, said efforts to contact the Ministry of Health and Wellness for an explanation have yielded no positive results.

“We made calls to the ministry, and I personally called asking if there was any kind of recourse that we could take. I was told that there was nothing that can be done, and they were taking it very lightly when these are our lives and our careers that are being affected. It was extremely disappointing overall,” she said. “It has really made me lose faith in the Jamaican healthcare system because it is very obvious that we are not cared for as people. It is not as though our careers are being prioritised.

“We are human beings who just finished college, and some of us might need to support themselves and their families, but nobody cares about that. We have tried to contact the ministry directly through email many times, and we have gotten nothing out of it,” she said.

The Gleaner was shown copies of letters and emails that the group sent to Tufton between August 5 and 7, outlining their plight.

According to the doctors, on one of the rare occasions they were granted an audience on July 21, 2025, Professor Colette Myrie, the then acting director in charge of the Health Planning and Integration Services Branch in the health ministry, told them that the ministry would be enforcing certain protocols to include the exclusion of candidates from institutions not accredited by the Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Education in Medicine and Other Health Professions.

Additionally, they say they were told that they should consider pursuing a locum internship, preceded by a four-month observership [where trainees shadow a member of the medical staff and learn more about the medical field] regardless of clinical experience in Jamaica’s healthcare system.

However, they said this policy was not communicated to them during their application process and that the locum internship, which would commence in January 2027, would result in an eight-month delay that would further negatively impact their financial security.

When The Gleaner reached out to Tufton on the matter, he said a release was being prepared to address the matter.

“I have asked the chief medical officer’s office to prepare a release. I have not seen correspondences to me [regarding the doctors’ claims], but the chief medical officer is dealing with it,” Tufton said in a brief response.

The doctors’ concerns have arisen four months after Tufton indicated in The Sunday Gleaner on May 18 that Jamaica needs approximately 500 doctors across a range of specialist areas over a three-to five-year period for the first phase of implementation of the ministry’s Secondary Care Model.

For the first of the two doctors quoted in this article, the waiting game that he and his peers are now facing could well prove detrimental to Jamaica’s healthcare system, which is in need of additional health professionals.

“We would have spent the last eight years studying to become doctors, including post-high school, and now that we are done, we are unable to garner employment,” he said. “This overseas degree is not one that is easily transferable, [and] after doing these exams, we still cannot gain employment without the completion of a 12-month internship.

“It does not seem that the Government is considering the repercussions that this shortage of doctors will have on patient care and patient outcome since the health sector is in dire need of physicians.”

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com