Dr. Shetty, who was in Cayman for four days this week to meet government officials and local partners, also revealed that the first phase of the hospital project was expected to break ground in August this year.
“It is our plan to work with a current local institution to get [the medical school] going quicker… In the [initial] plan, the medical school was not supposed to start till the third or fourth year. We decided to expedite that,” explained local partner Gene Thompson.
The medical school will be based within an existing building at a local institution. Dr. Shetty declined to identify which local institution he was partnering with, saying the deal had not yet been “tied down”.
Dr. A. Raghuvanshi, managing director of Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospitals, the group behind the proposed project, said: “By the end of this year, the coming academic year, we should start a medical school that will take about 100 students.”
Dr. Shetty said about 700 students graduated in Cayman every year, only one or two of whom opt to take medical courses after leaving school. He said that if there were a medical school on the island where they could train as doctors, nurses or technicians, one in seven graduates would go into the medical field,
“Healthcare jobs are the only recession-proof jobs,” he said, adding that in recent years, the only industry that created jobs was the healthcare sector. “Currently there is a shortage of three to four million jobs in the healthcare sector,” he said.
“No country should depend on foreign medical specialists to look after healthcare in their country. It is very important that the Cayman government and Cayman people train adequate numbers of doctors, nurses and technicians to look after their own healthcare,” Dr. Shetty added.
The hospital project, officially called the Narayana Cayman University Medical Centre, is slated to be built at the High Rock area of East End, where the Shetty group has bought 200 acres of a 600-acre site. The hospital, its associated assisted living facility and research centre will be built on the 200 acres, while related infrastructure, such as a hotel, will be built by Joseph Imparato, who sold the land to the Shetty group and who still owns the adjacent 400 acres.
The initial phase of the project involves the establishment of a 140-bed hospital, which if all going to schedule, should start accepting its first patients in August 2013, Dr. Shetty told reporters at a briefing Friday, 6 January, shortly before flying off island.
For more on this story, read Monday’s Caymanian Compass…
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This is going to be fantastic for Cayman and can’t come too soon.
Excellent!!! Someone is finally being proactive, I bet government argued for this from the start.. (:
Now this I cannot believe anyone would protest against or say that Cayman doesn’t need it or that it won’t benefit the Caymanian people. Obviously Shetty is looking to avoid the cost of Work Permits wherever possible.
Hopefully there are some bright young students reading this and saying that’s what I want to do. Come on young people step up to the plate and grasp this opportunity to be a positive part of Caymans future.
Wouldn’t be nice to say you were the first Caymanian Doctor that trained at home.
However I am sure the school will be costly as all medical schools are. It would be really great to see some of the Big Money families around Cayman show their commitment to their people and start some kind of scholarship programs that students can vie for or some kind of work your way through school programs.
I wonder what those critics of the UDP administration saying now??? Introducing medical tourism to cayman plus opening a Med School. Watch out PPM and Independants, UDP may just get back in for another 4 years. Take heed of my words!
A medical school has nothing to do with medical tourism, and just in case nobody noticed, we already have a medical school in Cayman. Getting recognition for a medical school from the countries where the graduates might wish to practice is not an easy task.
We have a far greater need to train teachers than doctors.
This is starting to look like a horse dead and cow fat story.
With due respect to all who are graduated yearly in Cayman, this report begs the question as to what level of further education such graduations qualify the graduates for.
And I emphasise at once that education must be a top priority in Cayman, for Caymanians.
Is it really the case that 100 out of 700 such graduates yearly will qualify for training as doctors, nurses or technicians?
And, taking 7 years for a doctor’s training, 4 for a nurse, and 3 for a technician (and courses could be longer than this), this will mean (assuming that of the annual 100, 15 start doctor’s training, 40 start nurse’s training, and 45 start technician’s training) that at the end of 7 years (assuming a 30% drop out rate), there will be approximately:
DOCTORS:
10 trained doctors ready to start work
10 in their last year of doctor’s training
10 fifth
10 fourth
10 third
10 second
10 first
NURSES
28 about to begin their 4th year of work
28 3rd
28 2nd
28 1st
28 in their last year of training
28 3rd
28 2nd
28 1st
TECHNICIANS
30 about to start their 5th year of work
30 4th
30 3rd
30 2nd
30 1st
30 in their last year of training
30 2nd
30 in their 3rd
Accepting that these figures are very rough (and no doubt there will be commentators ready to pick them apart), let us consider the capital and recurrent expenditure of training such numbers. And where will they all find jobs? Assuming a working life to age 55 as an average, the numbers build-up is astonishing.
By the way, I thought medical school meant an establishment for training doctors, and that a nursing college or school trains nurses. Likewise, for technician training.
More, much more clarity – and searching questions by the Government – is required on this whole subject.
While I respect everyone gripes with the things the UDP do. I can’t understand how this whole Shetty thing can hurt. Correct me if I’m wrong but even if there’s already a Medical School in Cayman how can a second one hurt? Reading the numbers Old Hand put on the plate it seems highly likely that if a lot of students choose to get in the Medical field, there may not be enough local jobs for all the Grads in the long run. But what would be wrong with a young Caymanian Graduate landing a Job as a doctor somewhere outside of Cayman? Are the feelings of most Caymanians that their children should only seek career opportunities in Cayman?