Why create a medical school in Macau?

Macau is a vibrant and well known international city attracting a large number of visitors (nearly 25 million per year) from mainland China and around the world. Expectations for expert basic and advanced medical care, education and training has increased over the years and are highly anticipated by both Macau residents and prospective visitors.

Medical college provides a centre for excellence in creating ‘tomorrow’s doctors’ and prospective specialists relevant to local needs; and also paves the way for quality care based on evidence-based practice of world standards. 

In practice, a population of up to 1 million can cater for a medical college with 100 students per year to obtain adequate clinical exposure and experience. Advances in e-learning and information technology has also made significant contribution to teaching and learning of basic and applied health sciences in virtual reality. 

Training tomorrow’s doctors who would be compassionate, caring and effective communicators has brought about study of humanities and ethics as a part and parcel of our medical curriculum in addition to learning of main-stream knowledge of basic and clinical sciences. In recent years, there is an increasing trend to build a medical curriculum on a ‘Competency-based medical syllabus’ to incorporate attributes essential to medical practice.

Establishment of a medical school will also provide a conversion program for returning overseas and China medical school graduates of Macau citizenship, to provide appropriate clinical teaching, accreditation and localization program, to meet the demand for Macau and to advance to an international standard. Opportunities will also be provided for inter-professional education with other health care professionals such as nursing, complementary & alternative medicine (e.g. TCM), rehabilitation medicine and pharmacy.  It is timely for Macau to establish a medical school to complement its health care with quality education and training’.