Opportunity for a British Dentist?
 

Hi folks,

I am looking to emigrate out of sunny London to Malaysia. I have family and young kids. I would want to work as a dentist in a decent area where people dont mind paying good money for good treatment. I'd be looking to work for someone until I felt orientated enough to start on my own.


I have so many questions but I will try to limit them:

Which area has good mix of middle class people (who have money to spend on their teeth)?

How much for a 4-5 bedroom house with garden to rent per month?

Where do you guys go to see a good dentist? how much did you pay for treatment?

Re: Opportunity for a British Dentist?
 

Hi mastermarner and welcome to BE :) I see you've posted the same questions in the Middle East so I guess you're just looking around initially?

I presume you are British?? Would you be allowed to operate as a dentist here?

Middle class people? Not sure that we have Classes here, do we? Anybody?

Sorry to be negative, but I'm struggling to think why anyone here would want to pay top dollar for dentistry here from a British dentist, when we have top class Malaysian dentists who are far, far cheaper than British.... and you can get an appointment straightaway, and they are very polite (unlike some in the UK). Quite a few Aussie friends (and friends of friends) come here to have their dentistry work done, and it is a fraction of what they would pay in Australia I am told.

I've only had a Clean done at the dentist here in Penang and they charged RM 100. That's currently (as at Oct 2011) GBP 20 approx. All up-to-date equipment (unlike Thailand) and I guess I was in there for about 45 minutes, quite thorough... and didn't have to make an appointment as one of the dentists was free at the time.

Re: Opportunity for a British Dentist?
 

The Malaysian dentists we visit in Bangsar, KL (a more upmarket area of KL) have all been trained at Australian universities and are very good. This particular practice is very popular with the expat community here and compared to Australia and the UK is reasonably priced.

Re: Opportunity for a British Dentist?
 

Forgot to say, in terms of price, my husband paid 180rm for a check up and clean and we paid 80rm for my sons first ever visit when he was 4 yers old.

Re: Opportunity for a British Dentist?
 

If you want to charge sky high prices and pick and choose your patients then Singapore would be a better choice.
There are downsides of course.

Re: Opportunity for a British Dentist?
 

I'm sure you can make a decent life in KL as a dentist. But dont expect to have a BMW M5 lifetyle like my local dentist have in Essex, UK.

I'm sure you can make the same figures in Malaysia as long as you dont convert it to Sterling.

Re: Opportunity for a British Dentist?
 

I think, echoing what others are saying, you have to be wary that if you move out here you're not going to be 'rich'. Malaysia has a very good medical system for a developing nation, with many home trained medics. Consider that many Malaysians will be happy to earn about 2k or 3k RM, a few hundred GBP, and then factor in how much that is going to leave for disposable income. And as others have said people come here on holiday tourism because it's so cheap (though maybe that would be a good venture for you).

But then again, people don't move out for the money, they move out for the relaxed life, low cost of living and so on. It's a life out of the 'rat race' and if that sounds appealing then take a look. You'll have to think long and hard over what you want etc.

But ask away anyway, loads of people here with knowledge far in excess of my own.

Oh and just to add, yes I'd love a good dentist, haven't seen one for a long time and just noticed my gums are bleeding :-D

Jack

Re: Opportunity for a British Dentist?
 

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Is there a significant market for cosmetic dentistry? You might be able to gauge this by how much marketing there is in your local magazines, papers adverts on posters.

Re: Opportunity for a British Dentist?
 

I think that the same problem arises, lack of disposable income. That said, people here are getting richer, just like the rest of Asia. Richer is a relative term though, not many have a Bentley yet :-D

In my uneducated opinion, you might get somewhere if you target the health tourism market.

I think that Sime Darby, a big conglomerate out here, do do some health tourism. They are a huge company anyway with fingers in lots of pies and are investing a lot in medical ventures. You might be wroth poking around with them since they are the sort of people who might be able to splash out on having a 'western educated' doctor. That said, they do tend to rely on locals who they sponsor through the education system, as do most countries. Their site is here regardless:

http://www.simedarbyhealthcare.com/

A quick flick through shows that they do have a) a careers section and b) do do health tourism. The first at least should give you an idea of what people earn out here so you can plan.

I also did a check on their 'find a doctor' selector and it seems they actually don't have any dentists, even though it is listed as a 'specialty' (though it looks like the search is simply generic). Just to underline my point, if you look at the full listing of doctors here you'll see that they are all 'local':

http://www.medeguide.com/simedarby/d...centre/all/all

An alternative it teaching, though I have no idea if you are qualified for this. Again, Sime Darby has it's own medical college who look to be expanding and *do* mostly use foreign teachers. Right now it is mostly focused on nursing:

http://www.simedarbycollege.edu.my

One other that I know of is AIMST. I have a freind who is a few years in to her government sponsored education to become a surgeon there. Again, a large medical training center looking to expand with a new campus:

http://www.aimst.edu.my/

And they do have a Faculty of Dentistry which again, as they boast, is staffed by foreigners. I also stumbled upon an entity called AIMST Dental Hospital listed at the bottom of the page under 'contacts'. A quick check on Google seems to suggest that this is quite a large facility and that they use it as a teaching hospital for their dentistry students. Again, maybe something you can look at, they give out 75 scholarships a year for dentistry so I assume it's quite a big faculty.

I think that is the thing about Malaysia and Asia in general; they want to stand by themselves. Thus they will take on someone if they need it but they mostly want foreigners to teach their own populations so they can look after themselves. But there are options all over, you just have to look.

Feel free to contact me if you need help. I'm really not much of an expert in anything, let alone dentistry, but we'll see. I feel that I can't help you too much because I simply don't really know the industry but I will try.

Jack