Three graduates from the University of Guyana’s School of Medicine have been accepted as interns at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Barbados. They are Amila Mohanlall, Ava McPherson and Adrian Peters, who were selected out of a field of six applicants.
This achievement is due to consultations recently between Dr. Carl Max Hanoman, acting Medical Director, and Dr Emanuel Cummings, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, both of whom were present at a media briefing held at the Tower Hotel on Thursday.
The students who graduated this year were selected based on their academic performance by a selection panel in Barbados. They are to be trained for three months in each of the following medical disciplines: general medicine, surgery, paediatrics and obstetrics/gynaecology.
Hanoman said that this was a remarkable achievement and represents formal recognition of Guyana’s medical graduates.
He said that it was the beginning of what is hoped to be an important and worthwhile relationship between the University of Guyana’s School of Medicine and the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus in Barbados.
And Chairman of the Medical Council of Guyana Dr. M.Y. Bacchus said that there was no better way of assessing Guyana’s medical students than by having another hospital accept them.
To date, over 100 medical doctors have graduated from the school and are at present serving in Guyana, the Eastern Caribbean, the United States, the United Kingdom, in African countries and other countries, Hanoman said. He further stated that many Guyanese graduates have excelled at various international medical examinations and one of them is a practising nephrologist in the United States while others are pursuing Doctor of Medicine programmes in Jamaica and Barbados.
But Hanoman lamented that not enough young doctors are completing post-graduate studies so that they can take over when older doctors retire. He said too that Barbados accepts 42 interns twice yearly and the hospital is willing to accept students pursuing post-graduate work.
He also expressed the hope that some of the doctors would return here to work although they will not earn what they could make in Barbados.