Challenges To Change And How To Win

Is India’s current medical education system and its curriculum up to the desired standards? What needs to be changed, and how?

- Dr. Poornima Baliga 

India has 479 medical colleges, the highest number in the world, and more than 67,000 MBBS seats in all. But the best hallmark of medical education is not just the number but the capabilities of the professionals that graduate from these colleges. It is no secret that the professional abilities and competence of doctors is greatly influenced by their training and the practice settings that they have been subjected to. Is the Indian medical graduate getting the right education or is there an inane need for change?

Need for change

Given these parameters, we can say with certainty that the current medical education system and the curriculum is not as desired or needed levels in the country. Here, learning is driven by the teachers’ individual knowledge base and enthusiasm. But the current curriculum imparts nothing on the important aspects of professionalism and doctorpatient communication. These key skills are left to be acquired through a system of role models in the workspace. But this is often not enough to make a good doctor out of a student, because this is too important an aspect to be left to chance.

The current system guides the students through standard textbooks, which in many cases, are not updated. Moreover, the skill assessment is done largely on the memorizing ability of the studentson recall of facts studied in a classroom. It is rarely a demonstration of selected skills. This doesn’t allow any room for improvement for the student without loss of precious time and resources. Skills imparted this way fall short of the desired needs of the medical profession, and certainly fall far short of what the country needs in its medical professionals. We now need a long overdue effort to make changes in the medical education that will address the issue of both quality and quantity of medical practitioners in the country.

Directions for change