Establishing and maintaining uniform standards of medical education

Dear Sir,

This is for your kind consideration that whether allowing non medical faculty in medical college is essential when MCI says on its home page that “The Medical Council of India is a statutory body charged with the responsibility of establishing and maintaining uniform standards of medical education and recognition of medical qualifications.”

How uniform standards are maintain if:

1. For all medically qualified teachers (MD/MS), recognition and registration in MCI is must. No such registration and recognition is essential for non medical personals, only 2 college for MSc bacteriology, 4 college in MSc Physiology, 5 college in MSc Biochemistry, 7 college for MSc Anatomy is recognized by MCI in all over India, but MSc and or PhD from any college, any university (without consideration of MCI recognition and registration) is eligible for faculty position in medical college.

2. There are 314 medical colleges for undergraduate, 68 in addition for MD/MS course, present Situation of faculty availability is as follow (data from MCI website only)
Present situation Anatomy Physiology Biochemistry Microbiology Pharmacology
Faculty Available 3585 3863 2663 2566 2955
Per year new admission/ per year pass outs 439 447 316 339 433
Recognized 354 342 231 353 330
Permitted/Recommended 85 105 85 33 103

Teacher available and fresh generation of new medical faculty in these department is same as other department as community medicine/PSM, Forensic. Than what is the need to fill faculty position in Medical College with non medical person? What these medical qualified teacher do, when faculty post will fill up by non medicals (up to 50% post of faculty, in case of Biochemistry Department).

3. Most of colleges (more than half) having all faculty non – medical and for showing 50%faculty ratio they recruits MBBS as tutor for short duration.

4. Non medical person joins medical college at half than recommended salary, so they are first choice in private colleges.

5. No any University providing Medical MSc course in Anatomy. Biochemistry, Physiology is seeking for MCI recognition for these courses, while in any Medical college, for MD/MS course in Anatomy, Biochemistry, Physiology, Microbiology and all other, MCI recognition is must. How can a non recognized, non recommended, non medical person will be eligible for faculty position ,while medically qualified, recognized MD/MS teacher is available

Kindly take into consideration this matter seriously, make strict rule to either stop entry of non medical person in medical college as faculty, or allow only MCI recognized MSC/PhD candidate.

Thanks

Dr. Ashish Sharma
Assistant professor
Department of Biochemistry
Geetanjali Medical College
Udaipur , Rajasthan