Medical teachers promotion norms relaxed

Updated on: Thursday, August 25, 2011

The overwhelming vacancies in state-run medical colleges have forced the government to relax norms for promoting doctors-cum-teachers to fill up hundreds of vacant posts. Cynics may call it a quick-fix solution, but the state says that patients would definitely benefit from the decision that promises to add over 250 senior doctors to the existing strength.

At a recent high-level meeting, the state decided to relax norms for promoting lecturers to the level of associate professors and associate professors to professors, irrespective of their years of experience.

As per rules, a lecturer needs to have at least five years of teaching experience to be promoted to the post of associate professor while an associate professor should have four years to become a professor. Only 20% of the teaching faculty in Maharashtra was eligible for any promotion.

This decision, claims the government, will fill up 150 vacant posts of associate professors and 95 professors in a few weeks. Professors teaching subjects like radiology, anaesthesia, paediatric surgery and neurosurgery will be given preference, given the acute shortage of teachers in these disciplines. Forensic medicine will soon follow suit.

Joint director of the Directorate of Medical Education and Research Dr Pravin Shingare said due to the relaxation in norms, not only will posts of senior doctors be filled, there will also be vacancies for lecturer posts. “It is easy to get new recruits at the entry level. So, we will recruit lecturers, besides promoting the existing doctors,” he said. Shingare added that 2-3 doctors have already been promoted and given joining orders.

Insiders say the state needs at least 2,000 doctors to efficiently run its 14 medical colleges. However, currently, only 1,400 doctors are running the show. The state could not fill the vacancies as they belonged to promotion quota. “Posts under promotion quota cannot be filled until a candidate becomes eligible. If not for this decision to relax norms, we would have taken another couple of years to fill up the vacancies,” Shingare said. He said that the decision was jointly taken by several departments of Mantralaya to improve the healthcare scenario.

The decision, however, may not solve the nagging problem of shortage of post-graduate seats. “This is because the Medical Council of India (MCI) would not recognise the out-of-turn promotions,” said a senior doctor. To this, Shingare said that MCI would award post-graduate seats against the post of professors only when the latter would be eligible as per the rule book.

Medical teachers promotion norms relaxed

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