In the early stages of the Faculty of Medicine establishment, this department was under the auspices of the Surgical Science Cluster with only a handful of lecturers and expatriate surgeons. In 2005, the Cluster was led by a leading Neurosurgeon, Prof. Dr Ahmad Zubaidi Abdul Latif. Under his leadership, the Cluster has actively embraced young doctors’ participation as Bumiputera trainee lecturers to be the department’s future driving force.

The Cluster was then helmed by Prof. Dr Normalina Mansor, an ophthalmologist, and continued by Prof. Dr Suneet Sood. During his tenure, teaching and learning activities for surgical students are carried out at the affiliated UiTM teaching hospitals under the Ministry of Health, Malaysia (MOH), namely Sg Buloh and Selayang Hospitals. UiTM lecturers conducted their clinical activities and surgical services for patients together with MOH surgeons in these hospitals.

In 2009, three trainee lecturers from this department (Dr Nurhashim Haron, Dr Ahmad Ramzi Yusoff, and Dr Adli Azam Mohamad Razi) completed their Master of Surgery at the University of Malaya. They returned to serve as full-time lecturers and surgeons. The Clinical Training Centre (CTC) of Selayang and Sg Buloh Campuses have just been completed and operational. The General Surgery Unit started its first outpatient services at both campuses in 2010. Inpatient ward admission and surgical operation were booming in CTC Sg Buloh’s following year, with the inaugural surgical procedure under general anaesthesia (performed by Dr Ahmad Ramzi Yusoff and Dr Nurhashim Haron and assisted by anaesthesiologist Dr Mafeitzeral Mamat) on May 11, 2011. That blissful day witnessed the inauguration of CTC operating room and intensive care unit, which later catapulted the clinical activities and confidence of other cluster members from Orthopaedics, Plastic Surgery, Cardiovascular and Thoracic, and Gynaecology to offer their services in CTC Sg Buloh.

Prof. Datuk Dr Ahmad Ridzwan Arshad, a prominent Plastic Surgeon, took over the cluster leadership in 2012 and set up the Surgical Discipline under the cluster umbrella to meet the demand of an increasing number of lecturers, surgeons, undergraduate students, and departmental activities. Under the helm of Dr Yahya Mohd Aripin, a Breast, and Endocrine Surgeon, he consolidated the undergraduate teaching and learning activities and augmented the clinical and operative activities. Surgical Discipline began to welcome the returning of several full-fledged lecturers and surgeons from their stint and developing several subspecialties, i.e., laparoscopy and robotics, breast and endocrine, hepatobiliary, urological, colorectal, endoscopy, and upper gastrointestinal.