National Medical Commission (NMC), the authorized medical education regulatory body for Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS), has found lack of adequate faculty members or senior residents in most of the medical colleges and lack of 50 per cent attendance requirement. NMC's Undergraduate Medical Education Board (UGMEB) revealed the report based on 134 colleges which were assessed in 2022-23.
The reports claimed that majority of the colleges had either ghost faculty and senior residents, while none of the institutes met with the minimum requirement of 50 percent attendance. The NMC stated that it found none of them visit the emergency department regularly as there is no one in the emergency medical department to interact with them other than the casualty medical officer.
“Posting in the emergency medicine department is considered a break period for the students,” UGMEB said. The NMC said this in a reply to a grievance shared by the Association of Emergency Physicians of India (AEPI) pertaining to the exclusion of emergency medicine speciality as a requirement for setting up new medical colleges.
In a recently notified rule, NMC excluded the requirement of an emergency department for setting up new medical colleges. Earlier, in its draft dated June 23, the department of emergency medicine was one of the 14 departments that new medical colleges should have for undergraduate admissions.
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In its reply to AEPI on September 22, the UGMEB said the ground reality of emergency medicine departments is different from what appears “on paper”.
The Commission in its reply said, “while examining the Aadhaar enabled biometric attendance of these colleges, we were surprised to see that there was 100 percent failure all colleges in respect of faculty and senior resident doctors employed to meet the requirements as per MSR (Minimum Standard Requirement) 2020. Most of the colleges had ghost faculty and SRS (Senior Residents) or had not employed the required faculty at all."
"After warning the colleges about the deficiencies and giving sufficient time to fulfil these deficiencies, no college was able to meet even the 50 percent attendance requirement. Zero attendance was still common."
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The board said that a total of 246 undergraduate medical colleges in 27 states were assessed for granting affiliation or continuing recognition for the academic year 2022-23.
This year also, UGMEB officials interacted with all the colleges between August 22 and August 24, with a total of 768 participants and 92 university representatives including Vice-Chancellors. The response said that all issues including emergency medical departments were discussed and most of the doubts of all the participants were cleared.
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