Will MCI’s Distt Residency Programme benefit?
| Date :24-Sep-2020 |
By Vikas Vaidya :
Like last year, Medical Council of India (MCI) has come up with 3 months District Residency Programme for the students pursuing Post Graduate medical courses, but the question being asked is that - ‘will that really be taken by students?’ Over the period of years, when MCI was an autonomous body, it has been trying to have post graduate students go for rural stint. Maharashtra Government has fixed an amount to be recovered from the students in case they fail to render services in rural hospitals. But it remained a total flop show. Barring a few, nobody went in rural areas and rendered their services.
To make students go for rural stint, last year new Government-owned body of MCI prepared a three-months District Residency Programme, a reduced one. Doctors joining their MD, MS and PG Diploma courses are supposed to do a mandatory rotational duty in district hospitals having the capacity of 100 or more beds for a period of 3 months, designed by Board of Governors of MCI. Rotation shall take place in the 3rd or 4th or 5th Semester of the Postgraduate programme and postgraduate medical students undergoing training shall be termed as a ‘District Resident’.
According to a former MCI member, there are two main issues involved in this training: one is learning experiences have to be derived from needs of the community; and doctors have to be trained in diverse settings including those which are close to the community. But this programme doesn’t serve the purpose as working in district hospitals doesn’t give the students the required experience. They are supposed to go into villages and offer their services at the level of Primary Health Centre. At PHC, they actual learn the several angles of medical treatment which they are unlikely to at district hospitals.
The programme has designed taking vastness of medical education into account. For example, students would be working in Outpatient, Inpatient, casualty and other areas, pre/para clinical disciplines like Anatomy, Biochemistry, Community Medicine, Forensic Medicine, Microbiology, Pathology, Physiology, and Pharmacology. But the main issue is whether the students would really go to the hospitals and attend scrupulously. Student would be drawing full stipend from their respective medical colleges and would also be getting a certificate at the end of their training.
In the past it has been found that students avoided this rural stint. In some of the cases they paid their stipend to the rural hospital heads to get the certificate of completion of rural stint. These students are in all possibility likely to stay home and do their theory study. Neither earlier body nor the present version of apex body has thought of preparing the mechanism that would really compel students to attend the programme honestly.