SHOULD ‘EXTERNSHIPS’ BE ALLOWED?

A blanket ban on ‘externships’ makes acquiring essential training after MBBS difficult for many students. The older system allowed the local administration to decide and it worked, they said.

- Atul Krishna

In late June, a student studying in a government medical college in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, moved the Gujarat High Court against the new National Medical Commission (NMC) regulations banning students from pursuing medical internships in institutions other than their own medical colleges.

The new regulations abolished the earlier practice in which students were allowed to pursue internships near their homes or in major cities as long as their institution did not object to this. The case is still pending at the Gujarat High court.

A month earlier, the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS), to which all medical colleges of the state are affiliated, had notified the policy.

The NMC Compulsory Rotating Internship Training (CRMI) Regulations, 2021, says: "All Indian medical graduates shall complete their entire period of compulsory rotating internship training (CRMI) in the institution where they have pursued and completed their Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS)."

The move aims to stop students leaving medical institutions in rural areas to urban areas for National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) PG preparation with the help of coaching institutions available in these major cities. Medical interns form an important part of the workforce in understaffed medical colleges and hospitals in rural areas and the distribution of doctors in the country is already lopsided.

However, students have a range of reasons for seeking transfers to other institutions, what is colloquially known as 'externships'. It could be to move closer to home, for a better work profile or to prepare for NEET PG. They also said that only a minority of students opted for "externships" and reacting with a blanket ban on these transfers is unfair and problematic. They demand a reset to the system they had before in which the institution had the power to decide.