HUIXIAN

SINGAPORE: Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan has assured that a premium will be placed on the quality of foreign doctors as Singapore opens its doors further to them.

He stressed that the aim is to loosen stringent rules that have prevented them from coming here, not to lower the bar on quality.

Mr Khaw was speaking to reporters at a Emergency Preparedness Exercise in Woodlands.

Changes are ahead to make it easier for foreign doctors to come here by expanding the list of medical schools they can come from, and Singapore wants every top medical school in the world to be on that list.

The probation period for trained foreign doctors will also be shortened, so to ensure quality, a good supervision and assessment system is necessary.

At present, doctors trained at 120 accredited institutions are allowed to practise here.

"My key point is not to lower standards; I don't believe that only good doctors are trained in Singapore. There are many good doctors trained elsewhere. Some of the top names in the US are from foreign countries, India, Europe. I don't know about China but we are also studying degrees from China. As I said in my own experience, in every country, there will always be I or 2 top medical schools, for the simple reason it is hard to get into, so you really have the best of students. So its to identify the top I or 2," said Mr Khaw.

Even for a huge country like India, he says Singapore won't go very far wrong, by getting doctors only from the very best institutions.

"In India there must be hundreds, if not thousands of medical schools. You can't just say that I serve everyone and then come in and let's see if they mess themselves up. But if they mess themselves up, they may mess up some patients, so I think that is not a practical way of doing it. Let's start with the top 2, very soon it will be the top 5 and then we'll see if the next 10 is still good, competent then we can be more open. Then we progress from there, step by step because in healthcare, life and death is involved," said Mr Khaw.

Singapore is also setting its sights on less traditional sources like Sweden, France and Germany, although Mr Khaw admitted it was harder to assess standards of doctors in Asia.

He also assured that it wouldn't be so easy for bogus doctors to make their way here -- hospitals work in teams, and he said such doctors could fake papers, not not abilities.

The number of foreign doctors practising here has risen from 130 in 2005, to 160 last year.