By IANS,
New Delhi : The Medical Council of India will Tuesday hold a critical meeting to revise the medical syllabus and look into other reforms in the undergraduate and postgraduate medical courses.
“MCI’s ultimate objectives for UG medical education are to improve quality through curriculum reforms and build capacity by increasing training capacity of doctors and medical teachers with an outcome of improved healthcare for people and patients across India,” MCI board of governors head S.K. Sarin said in a statement.
Over 225 experts on medical education, vice chancellors of state health universities, state/union territory Directorates of Medical Education, principals/deans of the medical colleges, heads of postgraduate institutes, higher management officials and key representatives from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare will be attending the meeting which will discuss these suggestions. The meeting will be inaugurated by Health Secretary K. Chandramouli.
Spelling out the main aims of the meeting, Sarin said the suggestions for education reforms will be taken up. Among the main aims of the reforms are increasing number of doctors to achieve doctor population ratio of 1:1,000 by 2031 and to meet the challenge of balancing the need for more medical colleges with the maintenance and improvement of quality standards.
“The UG medical course, while keeping the total duration intact as five and half years, has been restructured with certain modifications to the existing curricula to accommodate the needs of society,” Sarin said.
He said the main emphasis was to facilitate horizontal and vertical integration between disciplines, bridge gaps between theory and practice and between hospital based medicine and community medicine.
“The changes in curriculum and the method of teaching is aimed at enhancing self directed learning, critical thinking and research abilities,” he said.
Uniform assessment at entry and exit, exit examinations for MBBS, PG & superspeciality, suggests introduction of a 2 year Master of Medicine (M. Med) programme equivalent to existing diplomas in various clinical specialties are among the suggestions which are to be taken up for discussion.