2015 will see the graduation of the largest medical class the University of the West Indies has ever produced. In the face of dwindling economic resources and rising costs of health care the 2015 cohort is a case of too many crabs and not enough barrels.

Last year the government struggled to find positions for the new batch of interns, having to stretch the usual quota of four basic rotations in internship year to include sub-specialties. This year, we have almost twice as many students graduating, provided we all pass final MBBS (and given our propensity to surpass the expectations of our administrators it’s very likely we all will). It’s begging the question: what are they going to do with us?

Rumours abound of strategies the government is trying to put in place to catch us all. But the catching will be clumsy if the rumours are to be believed. Some people murmur that a number of interns will be deferred from taking up posts until January of the following year. Others whisper that a shift system will be implemented allowing each intern to work for eight hours a day – this comes with the abolition of duties and (distressingly) the abolition of duty pay. But it’s all he said, she said, Chinese telephone.

Then there is the idea of the flexi-week. Recently decried by the Jamaica Medical Doctors Association, the flexi-week is a modification of the 40 hour work week that would allow employees and employers to come to individualized agreements on the distribution of working hours. The government wanted to implement this bill on April 1 but JMDA cried foul, admonishing Parliament for not holding discussions with key stake-holders (namely, doctors).

It is strange that on the cusp of entering the workforce, so much of the dialogue about the changes affecting that workforce is happening over our heads. We have a right to information that will affect how we live, work and do business in the upcoming years and it isn’t fair to withhold this information on the basis that we have not yet passed exams (if that is indeed the basis). Transparency is key or else, much like our transition through medical school, our transition into internship will be a rude awakening.

No one in my year batch knows just what awaits us on July 1, 2015. There are so many questions that need to be answered. Where will we be placed? How many hours will we have to work? How will we be paid? How will we afford to repay our loans?

UWI answers these questions with: We need a new hall of residence. We need a new faculty building. We need a new administrative building. We need an extension to the university hospital. As long as the input (students) generates revenue, the by-product (doctors) can muddle along as it pleases. Or doesn’t please, as the case may be.

Can we have the health ministry intervening to put a cap on the number of medical students the UWI can accept in any one year? There are so many disadvantages to large medical classes it would take an entire post to enumerate them all. Suffice to say the risk far outweighs the benefit.