Approach:
- Introduction.
- Point out the major limitations in medical education.
- Suggest some key remedial measures.
India deals with serious shortage of medical professionals, which is a major impediment for achieving the health-related Sustainable Development Goals. Fixing the problems in the medical industry is crucial to the health and well-being of a country.
Some of the major limitations in Indian medical education system are mentioned as below:
- The number of medical colleges in India are way too lessthan required. For example, only 89,875 out of 1.6 million students who appeared in NEET-2021, were selected for 596 medical colleges in the country.
- India is also lacking in providingadequate quality faculty, which will be a hinderance in case number of seats are increased.
- Fees structure in the private medical colleges is not affordable leading to inequities in medical education.
- There has been mushrooming of poor quality colleges which lack proper infrastructure, and trained faculty at the postgraduate level.
- Methods of education are still not updated with advances in e-learning including digital dissections and remote learning.
Remedial Measures to strengthen medical education in India:
In order to effectively address these challenges, our health systems must be strengthened. Some of the suggested remedial measures are :
- Government should increase the healthcare spending to 5% of the GDP as envisaged by Economic Survey 2020-21.
- Increase the number of medical colleges, especially in states that have a low number of seats with MBBS Courses. It can bring in uniformity of access across states and fill the demand-supply gap.
- Common classrooms must be created by virtually linking medical colleges with more prevalent use of technology, to share some of the faculty where there is considerable faculty shortage.
- State governments must financially assist in transformation of district hospitals with added nursing colleges and allied health professional training centers to create a multi-layered, multi-skilled health workforce.
- Pushing for reforms like Restructuring medical licensing systems, ranking medical colleges, and standardizing entry requirements at medical schools across the country are all essential reforms under the NMC.
Legacy Editor Changed status to publish March 8, 2023