Welcome to Faculty of Medicine UiTM website.
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Professor Dato' Dr Khalid Yusoff |
It is not too late to congratulate our 10th batch of 237 first year medical students who had begun their five year sojourn with us at our new UiTM Medical Campus in Sungai Buloh on the 9th September 2012. Neither is it too late to congratulate our 5th batch of 140 students who received their scrolls at the 77th Convocation at Dewan Agong Tuanku Canselor on 25th November 2012, especially Dr Muhammad Nur Azmi B. Baharuddin who is our first student to obtain MBBS (Honours) after achieving an all round Distinction. Congratulations also go to four students who would be receiving their MBBS with Distinctions. It is also noteworthy that two of our students, Wan Mohammad Hafiz Bin Wan Razali and Siti Khairani Binti Mohd Hafiz Ngoo have just come back from a year of research at Harvard University and three more students Burhanuddin Bin Moize, Nur Hazirah Binti Mohamed Hisham, and Fatthy Fazzila Binti Zainal Abidin who have just begun their one year of research at Harvard – this is under a uniquely UiTM programme, the Advanced Medical Science. All 18 who completed their Advanced Medical Science last year presented their work to the Faculty on 13th October recently – it’s amazing what could be accomplished by our students within just one year of research. This year 14 students have started their Advanced Medical Science year. I would like to thank Professor Dr. Mohamed Nasimul Islam, the Coordinator of this programme, for his total commitment to it. Professor Dr Mohd Hamim Rajikin, the Deputy Dean in-charge of undergraduate studies is having his hands full with all these changes and development including the shifting, and managing over 1000 undergraduate students and a complex, integrated medical curriculum, particularly now when our intake is the biggest among the public medical schools. My appreciation goes to him and his team especially the Phase Coordinators (Dr. Nuraliza Abdul Satar – Phase I, Dr. Effat Omar – Phase II and Associate Professor Dr. Suzanna Daud – Phase III).
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Our research portfolio is still relatively small compared to other established medical schools, but it is growing. We do need more of our academic staff to be involved in research and more to take up the responsibility as Principal Investigators. Although we received a mere RM 5 million worth of research grants last year, much of this was however high-end and prestigious – we won one of the eight bottom-up competitive Long-term Research Grants Scheme (LRGS) awards from the Ministry of Higher Education and a number of international grants. The Institute of Medical Molecular Biotechnology (IMMB) under Associate Professor Dr Gabriele is now much more lively and so is the Animal Laboratory now under Professor Dr. Zainal Abidin Abu Hasan. We are working now to turn it into a National Laboratory, in collaboration with McGill University, Canada. The Centre for Translational Research and Epidemiology (The CenTRE) managed by Associate Professor Dr Tengku Saifudin Tengku Ismail at the Selayang Campus and Dr Maizatullifah Miskan in Sungai Buloh Campus is growing from strength to strength. The CenTRE is not just a place where individual translational research and epidemiology studies are being conducted, it is where a number of research projects across the nation are being led and managed. These include the REDISCOVER Programme (the LRGS Project), PURE Study, COMPASS Study, ODYSSEY CV Outcomes Study HOPE-3, HOPE-4 (we won the internationally highly competitive Grand Challenges Canada grant), and TIPS-3 Study. It is heartening that about a dozen papers were accepted for presentation at the 24th Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Hypertension in Sydney recently and papers from PURE had been published in top journals such as the Lancet. Thus even though our research portfolio tends to be relatively small, it tends to be relatively high impact and high value. The CenTRE also offers research facilities such as the Statistics Clinics at both its Selayang and Sg Buloh sites, as well as training in particular in Good Clinical Practice (the last one was on 8th – 10th November). Nonetheless, we are working on a Research BluePrint to further enhance our research portfolio. Our Annual Research Colloquim on 2nd and 3rd December was superbly put together by Professor Dr. Methil Kannan Kutty. This was preceded on the 1st December by a Workshop / Seminar on Training of Health Professionals for the 21st Century hosted by the Academy of Sciences and organized by the Faculty through the able involvement of Professor Dr. Sabariah Abdul Rahman and Dr. Effat Omar. The Faculty organized its first Symposium on Endocrinology, with participation of outside speakers and attendees from outside campus, plus our students and staff. My thanks to Dr. Effat Omar for this successful event. This was held in conjunction with the visit of Professor Gordon Wiliams from Harvard University who is here for a one week teaching engagement.
Postgraduate studies offered by the Faculty is a fast growing area. We now have 66 MSc and 17 PhD students; small but growing. We are pleased that since last year we were given the confidence by the National Conjoint Board, MQA, and MOHE to conduct the specialist training Masters programmes in Internal Medicine, Psychiatry and Primary Care. Alhamdulillah, we have just been given the mandate to offer the Masters in Pathology, which we target to start in the next academic year. We are also working on a unique basket of training portfolio under the ‘Postgraduate Boutique Programme’ which focus on training of various skills set for the practicing doctors which are currently not formally provided for. The Postgraduate Diploma on Obstetric Ultrasound has been approved by MQA and MOHE, and will be introduced in this coming year. Other programmes include Master in Medical Ethics and Jurisprudence, and postgraduate programmes on ICT for the Clinician and Entrepreneurship for the Clinician. Professor Dr Hashim Md Tahir is anchoring this challenging and highly innovation-driven portfolio, and my appreciation goes to him.
Through the College of Physicians of Malaysia, the Faculty has an arrangement with the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh to web-stream their Educational Seminars direct to our Lecture Theatre at the Selayang Campus. As it is a direct telecast from Edinburgh, the event begins at about 5pm and lasts till midnight – which in a way suits us. Dr. Tarita Taib and Ms Isnariza are very much into organizing these telecasts and I am sure these have been of benefit to our academic staff and students. We need to thank them for their effort and persistence. We also have an arrangement with the College of Physicians of Malaysia to allow our Final Year Students to join their Saturday Teach-Ins on the first Saturday of every month as the Academy House – this is another learning opportunity for our students.
Medical Education gets a boost recently when it organizes the Workshop on Case-based Learning led by Professor Geoff McColl, Head of Medical Education at Melbourne University. Melbourne University is of course no stranger to us as it has been closely working with us in medical education since our early days. A number of our lecturers have gone over for training in specific fields and currently we have three lecturers pursuing their PhDs there. We are always committed to improve and update our Curriculum and learning / teaching environment. Professor Dr. Sabariah who now heads the Medical Education Research and Development Unit (MERDU) has a full plate to handle, one initiative is to introduce Case-based Learning into our Curriculum as well as initiate research in medical education.
Thus the Faculty is ending this year with full of activities and big bang. I hope all have enjoyed the year, as I have, and we all look forward to 2013.
Professor Dato’ Dr Khalid Yusoff
Dean