The Indian Medical Association has sought the urgent intervention of the Health Ministry to ensure that only medical postgraduates be considered as eligible candidates for appointment in the medical colleges to uphold the competency-based medical education (CBME) Syllabus. It also wants that non-medical postgraduates’ faculties continuing in Medical College be adjusted within the 15% limit already notified by the National Medical Commission.
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In its letter, on July 19, to the Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, the Association’s national president Dr. Sharad Kumar Agarwal said that as per the old regulations of MCI on teacher eligibility and criteria, non-medical postgraduates in Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, and Microbiology and Pharmacology were appointed as faculties in Medical Colleges, to a maximum of 30% of total faculty strength, as there were not enough medical postgraduates in these departments.
However, due to the efforts of the present government hundreds of medical graduates (MBBS) have qualified for their postgraduate studies in paraclinical subjects such as Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, Microbiology and pharmacology, and hence the NMC has passed an order titled TEQ in Medical Institution Regulation 2022 and notified that only 15% of the faculties shall be non-Medical Postgraduates in these departments.
It further added that applied medicine is essential in the fields of Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, pharmacology, and microbiology, to teach the relevance and importance in diagnosing disease and treatment and surgery.
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“Without basic applied medicine knowledge of these pre-clinical subjects, students will not be able to understand and correlate the clinical studies and as only the MBBS graduates of medicine, after their post-graduation in the concerned subject, can teach the subject with applied medical importance in a comprehensive way. With the revised CBME, it is essential for the students to study these paraclinical subjects with integration into the clinical subjects. This integrative curriculum cannot be taught by non-medical postgraduates,” said Dr. Agarwal.
He added that now, non-medical teachers have organised as an association and filed a suit in the Supreme Court against the NMC’s decision. The court has refused to entertain it and advised the ministry and NMC to clarify this to the court in the coming hearing in July.
“IMA firmly believes that where thousands of postgraduate medical teachers are available in the paraclinical field, it is not advisable to compromise with the standard of medical education by allowing non-medical teachers who have no knowledge of Applied Medicine and undergraduate curriculum of MBBS to teach them on this subject,’’ said the Association.
