Health and Tech: NMC approves non-medical PhDs to turn faculty

Severe shortage of senior MBBS doctors has led to the controversial move

Hyderabad: The decision to establish more medical colleges in the country, understandably to create a large pool of qualified doctors has ended-up creating challenges related to sustaining the quality of medical education.

To put it simply, too many medical colleges and MBBS seats are being added across the country at a brisk pace. However, there are not many existing medical doctors to impart quality medical education to young medical students, commensurate with the rise in medical seats.

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The severe shortage of doctors and the unmet aspirations of students to pursue medicine, who often end-up travelling to remote countries in East Europe, South Africa and China to pursue MBBS, has dictated the policies of the National Medical Commission (NMC), the regulatory body of medical education in India.

This year alone, the NMC accorded permission to establish 50 medical colleges, taking the total number of medical seats in the country to nearly 1 lakh. At the same time, notices were served on over 40 medical colleges for lapses, especially in maintaining biometric attendance of the faculty.

NMC allows non-medical PhDs to teach medical students:

To tide over the crisis of this shortage, the NMC has allowed engaging qualified non-medical Post-Graduate (PG) individuals to teach Anatomy, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Physiology and Microbiology.

The NMC says “In the Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Biochemistry, non-medical graduates having M.Sc (relevant medical) and PhD qualifications, granted by the recognised Medical College/ Institute as regular on campus course in the subject concerned, can be appointed as Assistant Professors”.

This NMC decision has triggered protests across the country. The Indian Medical Association, Headquarters, in a recent statement said, “Applied medicine is essential in the fields of Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry etc, to teach the relevance and importance in diagnosing disease, treatment and surgery. Without basic applied medicine knowledge, students will not be able to understand and correlate the clinical aspects of medicine. Only MBBS graduates of medicine, after their PG can teach the subject with applied medical importance. The medical curriculum cannot be taught by non-medical postgraduates.”

What is happening in other countries?

While medical bodies have genuine arguments on the issue, the fact also remains that medical colleges in United States and Europe, routinely employ talented non-medical PhD candidates, to teach medical graduates.

The Association of American Medical Colleges data indicates that non-medical PhD doctors form a large chunk of teaching faculty and based on multiple reports, an estimated 20 per cent of faculty there is non-doctors.

The National M.Sc Medical Teachers Association (NMMTA) argues that only medical doctors have to teach certain subjects in medicine is a propaganda and adds, “it is a fake narrative that only doctors should teach medical students. A total of 31 of the world’s top 100 medical institutions are in the US and data in such colleges indicates that close to 18 per cent of faculty are non-medical”.

The dire need to have more doctors in government hospitals has definitely created a Catch-22 situation for regulators, States and the Central Government, as they continue to struggle with the huge demand for MBBS seats on one side and shortage of faculty that can maintain the much-needed quality in medical education.