Repairing a Tarnished Image

• Jessica Kirchner FrankleMY name is Jessica Kirchner Frankle and I am a 6th-year medical student.Throughout the past five years the pioneering students decided to not get involved with the media surrounding the tribulations experienced at the Unam School of Medicine, as we felt that the politics had nothing to do with our competencies as medical students.

However, after multiple front page newspaper articles, the Namibian community is questioning our competencies as medical practitioners and rightfully so.

We do acknowledge that health is the highest law and should never be taken lightly. However many negative things have been said about our proficiency without evidence. We have worked extremely hard these past five years to become knowledgeable enough to be safe doctors and to start internship in 2015. With no intent of sounding egoistic, I think it is time to hear things from our side.

Since we started our clinical rotations in our third year, we have been working at Katutura State Hospital and Windhoek Central Hospital alongside many of the doctors employed by the ministry of health. Many of these doctors have told us that we are on par, welcoming us to be part of the internship programme of 2015.

Last year we completed our dissertations and worked for six months in the north alongside specialists in the fields of paediatrics, internal medicine, surgery and obstetrics and gynaecology. All gave us positive feedback, hoping at least half of us would be doing our internship there.

The past two years we have done multiple electives and rural attachments in hospitals and clinics around the country, the continent and world as some of the students went to Germany and Finland to learn how medicine is practised in First World countries.

Most importantly, we wrote and passed our final examinations last year which involved external examiners. While the role of the external examiner varies with the level of examination, I believe that the purpose of the system remains the same: to ensure that standards are kept the same across universities, and to provide an assurance of fair play given that internal examiners might be prejudiced against a candidate.

With this said, we do not wish nor have the authority to comment on the issues that have come to light these past few months. However, I can say this, we are concerned and greatly dissatisfied with the manner in which the HPCNA and Unam School of Medicine disregarded the law in the setting up of the medical degree programme, which resulted in us being misled with regards to the duration of our course of study, which should never have been approved as five years, since this is against the law.

As for Namibian medical and dental profession law, most of the final year students heard of this only on 22 January 2015.

We do not know who is to blame for this serious omission, nor do we believe that pointing fingers will bring us closer to a solution. However, we have not received a single apology even though we have been greatly affected by this situation. With bursaries only covering a five-year programme and having prepared ourselves to start earning a pay cheque at the end of January, many of us are now in trouble as we fail to provide for our families.

However, we, as a class have come to accept doing a sixth year of student internship. Not because we feel incompetent but because it is the law. A sixth year can only add to our knowledge basis and we will use it to identify weak spots in our training and it will surely help us as we strive towards excellence.

Currently we are not attending classes nor working in the hospitals as we are awaiting information on how we expect this year to run. We are tired of being caught up in the middle of poor management.

I have had the pleasure of working with all 34 of my colleagues. Never have I worked with a group more passionate, undeterred and hard working. We urge the Namibian community to not lose faith in the Namibian trained doctors due to “politics and scandal”.

We are just trying to repair our tarnished name.