Self-financing colleges to dilute medical education

Chennai, Mar 8 (UNI) The self-financing private medical colleges in the country are diluting the medical education at the risk of patients, according to President of National Board of Examinations (NBE) A Rajasekaran.

Addressing a press conference here today, Prof Rajasekaran said he would substantiate his allegation by saying some private medical colleges were commercialising even the Post Graduate medical seats.

He said the Union government was likely to introduce a nationwide unique board, like in the US and UK, for overseeing the Post Graduate medical courses offered by these Universities as well as the the NBE (Diplomat National Board-DNB). This would overcome the existing confusions and other practical hurdles on awarding Post Graduate degrees, he added.

He said for this purpose, the government had constituted a high-level committee.

The Board President said the NBE realised the fact that the existing medical education system had not given adequate importance to the family medicine and rural surgery. It decided to start a three year Post Graduate course in family medicine, from the ensuing academic year.

He said the NBE would introduce a foreign medical graduates screening test for those who completed the medical courses from countries like China and Russia. Only after successfuly finishing this test, these doctors would be permitted to practice in India, he added.

He said there were more than 550 accredited institutions and hospitals all over the country and nearly 100 new institutions and hospitals were accredited every year for DNB trainings.

Dr Rajasekaran also pointed out that they entered into an agreement with the School of Health Sciences of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi, recently to start satellite-based interactive CME programmes for DNB students.

He said the NBE had developed Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) for practical examinations in ophthalmoloy, ENT and paediatrics, and efforts were on to introduce OSCE in orthopaedics, dermatology and anaesthesia from the coming academic year. Efforts were also being made to develop OSCE in other disciplines and to use modern IT techniques in OSCE, he added.

UNI