Bhubaneswar: “To strengthen the healthcare delivery mechanism in both the rural and urban pockets of the country, more medical colleges should come up to tackle the shortage of doctors,” said Vijendra Kumar, Professor, Paediatric surgery and Member of UG Curriculum Board, National Medical Commission (NMC) while addressing the 15th NMC Teachers’ Meet recently organised at AIIMS, Bhubaneswar.
A total of 175 medical teachers from all 17 medical colleges of the state including their Deans attended the meeting. Aruna Vanekar, President UG Curriculum Board NMC highlighted the different changes in MBBS curriculum such as criteria for MBBS attendance, maximum numbers and years of attempts to complete the MBBS course and internship. The provision of mandatory thesis submission before the postgraduate final examination has been removed and included as part of final practical examination, she added. BN Gangadhar, chairman of the NMC emphasised on the role of doctors as social reformers.
Gangadhar along with Vanikar also interacted with Deans and clarified their queries pertaining to family adoption programme, attitude, ethics, communication module and competency-based curriculum. Yogendar Malik, president, the Ethics and Regulation Board of NMC briefed about the different forums to address the doctors’ grievances, and changes made in regulations. Professor Manas Ranjan Sahoo, vice-chancellor of Odisha University Health Sciences (OUHS) talked about the change in teaching learning patterns between previous and current generation students.
ARINDAM GANGULY, OP