Problems plaguing Medical Education in India.

• Medical education is the bedrock for country's Health!
• Today’s health professionals are required to have knowledge and professionalism, to be proficient in handling disruptive technologies, be ethical, demonstrate empathy, understand the economics of healthcare and handle large and diverse teams.
• Despite tremendous changes in health systems over the last century, medical education curricula have remained mostly outdated.

India’s Medical Education scenario

• At present, there are 
• there are now 70,978 MBBS seats in 529 colleges in India.
• 529 Medical Collages across India, out of which 255 in Government and 285 are in Private sector.
• Karnataka has the highest (57) number of medical colleges.

Schemes for Medical Education to raise more UG & PG Seats in a phased manner.

Schemes for Strengthening and Upgradation of State Government Medical Colleges For Increase of PG Seats (Phase I & II):

• Phase I : The scheme was launched in XI Five Year Plan with the objective of increasing postgraduate seats in Government medical colleges. Funds are provided to the Government Medical Colleges for infrastructure development.
• Phase II: The scheme was launched in February, 2018 with the objective of increasing 4000 more postgraduate seats in Government medical colleges.

Scheme For Establishment of New Medical Colleges Attached with Existing District/Referral Hospitals (Phase I & II):

• The objective of the scheme is to utilize the existing infrastructure of district hospitals for increasing additional undergraduate seats in a cost effective manner by attachment of new medical college with exiting district/referral hospitals.
• Phase I: Establish medical colleges in underserved areas of the country to create an additional annual intake capacity
• Phase II: New colleges identifies to ensure the availability of one medical college for every 3 Parliamentary Constituencies and at least one Government Medical College in every State of the country.

Strengthening and Up-Gradation of State Government Medical Colleges for Increase in Intake Capacity of MBBS Seats:

• Under the scheme, it is proposed to create additional 10,000 MBBS seats in existing Government medical colleges in the country.

why India lag behind in Healthcare?

• severe shortcomings in conceptual as well as implementation in medical education.
• The doctor to patient ratio has increased but these numbers do not align well with the overall quality of medical care in the country.

Corruption in medical education.

Fake institutes, fake records,fake faculty,fake patients,huge donations and in a nutshell its medical Mafia!

A change in the law in the 1990s made it easy to open private MEDICAL schools Which invariably commercialised medical education to a great extent.

Lack of skilled teachers

• Teachers for medical institutes are selected based on their degrees and not their clinical experience. 
• Moreover, no teaching training is provided and teaching innovations are also lacking.
• The salary given to a full time government college professor needs to be rationalised. The lower salary ensures that only the poorest talent is available, because the more talented will go in for a private practice.
• In government hospitals a constant threat of transfer also remains.

Backdated syllabus and teaching style

• Regular breakthroughs take place in the medical field every day, but the medical studies syllabus in India is not updated accordingly. New domains of medical science are also barely touched upon.

Disparity in infrastructure across different states

• Only four states – Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu – account for about 1.3 lakh out of nearly 2.4 lakh medical seats across India.

Craze of Super-specialty

• It is not possible to create one type of doctors to cater to every disease in a country as big as India.
• MBBS students specialise in certain fields to be able to get a job and thus, research is neglected and students miss out on learning about all the different sides of medical studies.

Brain drain:

•  47,000 Indian doctors practicing in the US and around 25,000 in the UK. This makes India the largest exporter of doctors in the world.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

• To achieve higher standards of medical education, our goal should be to create an efficient accreditation system; promote an equal distribution of resources, redesign curricula with stricter implementation and improved assessment methodologies.

Reforms needed in Medical Education

Increasing medical seats without compromising quality

• There is a pressing need to revisit the existing guidelines for setting up medical schools and the right number of seats.
• Methods of education are undergoing changes on account of advances in e-learning methods, including remote learning, virtual classrooms, digital dissections, and simulation systems for imparting skills.
• Extending teaching privileges to practising physicians and allowing e-learning tools will address the shortage of quality teachers across the system.
• Together, these reforms could double the existing medical seats without compromising on the quality of teaching.

Continuing learning system

• There are continuous ongoing innovations in medical education to prepare professionals for the complex and rapidly changing healthcare system.
• However, it is estimated that to double the medical knowledge, it will require just 73 days in 2020 compared to 50 years in 1950.
• At this pace of change, a student can be prepared to process information that is readily available than to know past knowledge.
• Periodic re-certification based on continuing learning systems may become essential to keep up with the fast pace of change.

Other reforms

• Students need to improve their basic management, communication and leadership skills and they must be trained by taking into account their social relevance as doctors.
• Medical education needs to be aligned with the societal needs, which differ from country to country. Strong emphasis needs to be put on rural and social issues and making students strongly aware of their responsibilities towards the same.
• Since health professionals work in teams, inter-professional combined learning methods should be introduced.
• Integration of subjects, innovative teaching methods, and a more prevalent use of technology in classrooms is required.
• More medical education platforms need to come up, which act as platforms where doctors and medical students can collaborate through real medical cases and other continuous medical education content.