Bartlett seeking to secure job security for medical students from his constituency

WESTERN BUREAU:

Following a situation last year, which saw several doctors who were trained in China finding it difficult to get accepted into local hospitals to do their internships, a push is now on to ensure that medical students from St James East Central are not similarly affected when they complete their training.

The push is being marshalled by Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, the constituency’s member of parliament, who is taking steps to ensure that tertiary-educated medical students from his constituency, who are involved in overseas medical programmes, meet the requirements to get employment in Jamaica using their accreditation.

Bartlett, who was addressing last Friday’s presentation of computer tablets to 14 students from primary schools across St James East Central, at the Montego Bay Convention Centre in St James, said he was having dialogue with Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton to address issues that could impact the students’ bids to secure employment.

“Every year, from our constituency education programme, we provide an average of J$10-million worth of support for our students and our teachers throughout East Central St James,” said Bartlett. “On average, every year we graduate 50 students from tertiary institutions, and just a few days ago, I got a number of them sending me their beautiful graduation pictures from the University of Technology, The University of the West Indies, and even from as far afield as China, where we have students who graduated from the health programme there.

“I have been talking to the minister of health about how to enable some of those students, our graduates, to become more integrated in the health programme here because we do have complaints that some have been put in a position where, after all this study, they come back and have no jobs because those institutions either lack the full accreditation, or there is some difference in the education standards here versus over there,” said Bartlett.

When contacted, Tufton told The Gleaner that the Office of the Chief Medical Officer in the Ministry of Health and Wellness is reviewing the process, and that an update would be provided once this is done.

In September 2025, it was reported that at least 30 doctors, who did six years of training in China, had applied for internships at several local hospitals after they graduated in April 2025. However, instead of being accepted, they reportedly got rejection letters.

CLAIMS

At the time, the affected doctors claimed that during a meeting on July 21 with Professor Colette Myrie, the then acting director in charge of the health ministry’s Health Planning and Integration Services Branch, they were told that certain protocols would be enforced, such as exclusion of candidates from institutions not accredited by the Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Education in Medicine and Other Health Professions, a policy shift they said they were not told about during their application process.

Dr Jacqueline Bisasor-McKenzie, Jamaica’s chief medical officer, subsequently reported that the internship programme was oversaturated with some 500 applications received during 2025. She said approximately 70 per cent of the applicants were foreign medical graduates from 100 different medical schools. She said that more than 250 interns had been placed on the programme over the past three years.

In seeking to avoid future hurdles, Bartlett said that parents of prospective tertiary-educated students in his constituency must ensure that the schools their children apply to have accreditation that will allow them to work anywhere globally after graduation, including in Jamaica.

“I urge the parents who come to us soliciting support for their children to take good note of these international colleges and universities that you are sending your children to so that when they graduate properly from these places, their certificates have accreditation that is acceptable anywhere in the world that they go, and certainly in Jamaica, where they have to come back and work,” said Bartlett.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com