Radiology Education in Southeast Asia: Current Status and Pedagogical Challenges

A young physician from the city of Kuching in eastern Malaysia on the island of Borneo wishes to become an interventional radiologist. She applies to the Ministry of Health in the capital Kuala Lumpur, in western Malaysia, a peninsula of the Asian mainland. Radiology is an extremely popular discipline, and she is nervous about her chances. Miraculously, she is invited to attend for interview by the Joint Central Committee, which oversees radiology training. From an interviewed group of 150 applicants, she is shortlisted with 35 other trainees, and the Ministry of Health approves her government-funded training position. She is assigned to work and train at the University Sains in Kota Bharu, capital of the Islamic state of Kelantan in northern peninsula Malaysia, as there is no training centre in eastern Malaysia. Her 40 fellow trainees are supervised by ten consultants, and there are two trainees from Iran, working under an agreement between Islamic governments. After 4 years of training and experience, she has passed the two sets of examinations and completed a project-based thesis on fluoroscopic radiation doses to staff in interventional radiology, and she returns home to work in the main government hospital in her hometown.