A young, Sandton-based aspiring doctor had high hopes of studying medicine in South Africa, however, after travelling halfway across the world to obtain a medical degree, he realised that not all universities offer a high standard of education.
As he is not comfortable with disclosing his name, this student wants to be referred to as Trishen.
Trishen wants to share his story on behalf of all aspiring doctors who are trying their best to make their dream a reality.
Trishen said, “I applied to study medicine after matric (2008). My applications were for numerous South African universities. I was a top achiever of my grade at the time and so I decided to enrol for a BSc Degree. I had to work very hard to get into the restricted medical majors which had 15 and 60 seats for anatomy and physiology respectively at the time. After graduating with my BSc, I continued to apply for medicine at a university in Kwa-Zulu Natal and to other medical programmes in my area. Even though I was top five in anatomy and top 10 in physiology I still wasn’t selected.”
It was at this point that Trishen said that he decided to study medicine in Hunan, China. He was so determined to succeed that he even did a six-month course in Mandarin and made the courageous choice to enrol for first year medicine in China.
Trishen repeatedly said, “I had to be a doctor.”
Trishen painted a negative picture of the standard of the degrees offered by the Chinese university when he said, “The night life in China was incredible and devoid of our late nights we still obtained distinctions. My mates from years above told me how their lecturers gave them answers to papers. My curiosity lead me to investigate their work and I realised that their standards were low compared to my ancillary modules that I have done back home.”
He continued, “My mates who graduated after five years came back to South Africa and failed the board exams more than once.”
As a result, Trishen decided to leave China after a year and pursue his degree at a South African university.
This aspiring doctor has refused to give up on his medical goals. He is currently a part of the graduate entrance medical programme at the University of the Witwatersrand and he is urging all students to be very cautious before applying at overseas universities.
The dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, Martin Veller said, “The training of medical students in China appears to be very different to that in South Africa. The primary differences relate to the duration of training and when and how clinical training and in particular contact with patients is managed.”
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