Medical colleges in Telangana allot ineligible examiners for MBBS practicals

Medical colleges in Telangana allot ineligible examiners for MBBS practicals

Many MSc faculty allotted for MBBS practical exams owing to lack of qualified members

Express News Service

Updated on: 

14 Mar 2024, 8:55 am

HYDERABAD : In contravention of norms of the National Medical Commission (NMC), many government medical colleges (GMC) in the state have allotted MSc and MSc PhD faculty as internal and external examiners for the MBBS practical examinations conducted in the colleges under the Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS).

As per the NMC norms, the examiners for the internal and external practical MBBS examinations must have at least four years of teaching experience after a postgraduate degree following MBBS. Therefore, faculty members who have only completed an MSc or MSc PhD are not eligible. The university had also issued the same directions in this regard to the colleges. However, owing to a lack of qualified members in various colleges across the state, many MSc faculty have been allotted for the MBBS practical exams, according to sources.

An assistant professor at the Suryapet Government Medical College told TNIE, “The norms, changed a few years ago, disallow MSc faculty from being examiners. However, the practice continues in government medical colleges.”

Irregular recruitment

While every GMC in the state has been reeling from a shortage in staff, the issue is more deep-rooted than that. Doctors said that most of the recruitment in the GMCs was on a contract basis for a year, while the recruitment of regular teaching staff was not done regularly.

Elaborating on the issue, a doctor from Nalgonda GMC said, “New government medical colleges are coming up in the state without the required infrastructure and teaching faculty. Some colleges have only one or two teaching staff. Meanwhile, the government is reluctant to fill vacancies regularly due to lack of funds. Contractual hiring fails to address understaffed GMCs, as these staff members serve for a year and many are hesitant to join due to limitations on private practice and lack of travel allowances for remote postings.”

He pointed out that while a faculty member under contract gets Rs 1.25 lakh per month, the regular faculty gets `85,000 for the same designation.

Regularise services: Doctors

Doctors and professors are advocating for the regularisation of contractual hiring as the most viable solution to address the understaffed GMCs and prevent ineligible faculty from being deployed as examiners.

Speaking to TNIE, Telangana State Medical Council vice-chairman Dr Gundagani Srinivas said, “We have been demanding the government to make all the faculty positions permanent. We also want them to be paid on par with the doctors at NIMS and AIIMS. Low salary is a major issue behind doctors preferring to join private hospitals. We also want the government to allow the doctors to carry on private practice outside the official working hours of 9 am to 4 pm.”

He said that the government’s latest decision to hire 4,356 new teaching faculty in the colleges was a temporary fix and that only by making these staff permanent can the issue of under-staffed colleges be resolved permanently.