Expanding mandate

Updated on: Friday, March 18, 2011

For medical aspirants across India, options during admissions broadly boil down to two: their first preference is almost any public college which offers the MBBS degree at throwaway rates, followed by private colleges where education is a lot dearer. But, which is the second best college among government institutes in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu or Karnataka?

Making that choice will get more hardboiled as the Medical Council of India (MCI) has decided to assess and grade colleges. A student will now be able to make a tough call on whether to sign up at JIPMER, Puducherry, Christian Medical College, Vellore, or at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

The MCI, which has been a college recognising and doctor-licensing body, is looking at expanding its mandate. “We want to see how we can improve the quality of medical education. We used to check faculty strength, infrastructure and other parameters. Now, we need to see how to improve the quality of medical colleges,” said Dr Devi Shetty, a member of the MCI board of governors.

Acting on the rot that has set in will not be easy. But improving the quality of medical institutes is in sync with the larger framework that the MCI’s Vision 2015 document spells out: raising the bar for Indian healthcare to match the global standards. The document prescribes sweeping reforms for undergraduate and postgraduate medical education programmes.

The document aims to evolve strategies for the road ahead in an ever-expanding medical education sector that has not been able to equally focus on quality.

So, from the quality of the curriculum to the patient inflow, from adopting new technology in teaching-learning to the quality of research carried out, the assessment process will consider all that before a college is graded.

While the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, has graded some medical colleges, not all institutes are graded.

It is unclear if the MCI will make assessment mandatory or not but Shetty added, “We are taking inputs from the NAAC and the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers on quality processes we need to develop.”

With the MCI rethinking the direction medical education should take, colleges will have to put the quality factor on steroids.

Expanding mandate

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