Shiksha Opinion: MBBS degree in 7.5 years? Please spare the medicos!

Chhavi Sharma | Shiksha.com

For most of us, February 13, 2014 was a normal day – wake up go to college/work, complete your errands, have food, study/work some more, go home and sleep. But for all students pursuing as well as aspiring to pursue medicine, it was a day full of shock and stress. The MCI (Medical Council of India) issued a notification declaring that from now on a student after completing his Class XII would have to undergo the regular MBBS programme for 4.5 years followed by two years of internship, which would then be succeeded by one year of mandatory rural posting. Summing it up, in order to become a medicine graduate in India one would have to study 7.5 years.

However, this is not the first time MBBS aspirants and students have been given this blow. In 2012, Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Health Minister of India revealed that the MCI was working on increasing the duration of the MBBS degree to 6.5 years and he favoured this decision. Here, also the extra one year was being added for rural posting.

You can’t help but feel bad for medical students. They spend many more years studying and take much longer to settle down professionally as compared to students from other streams. What’s more, an MBBS degree alone does not help since in this age of specialization, people rarely go to a doctor who possesses just an MBBS degree.

Thus, in order to be considered a good, passionate and sincere doctor, an MBBS degree isn’t enough and one is expected to complete post graduation followed by a senior residency. This adds up to:

7.5 years (MBBS degree)+ 3 years (MD/DNB)+ 3 years (Senior Residency) = 13.5 years!

Essentially, in that scenario, medicine students will start studying along with their batchmates from other streams such as commerce, arts and engineering, but they will continue to study when those other guys finish their graduation, and will still be studying when their batchmates complete their post-graduation and that is not the end of the road! Medicine students will still be studying from massive volumes of Gray’s Anatomy, Bailey and Love for Surgery and Harrison’s Principles for Internal Medicine, when their non-medico batchmates get hired at some top level MNC that too with a post-graduation degree in hand.

So, this proposal of increasing the duration of an MBBS degree not only adds to the woes but seems completely flawed. I believe that these random suggestions for duration increase in the MBBS course, would discourage students into opting out of selecting PCB (physics, chemistry, biology) in their 10+2. Nor can you blame them. Had I been in their place I would have done something similar, even if I were passionate about practicing medicine. And this is not only because of the long study years but also because of the uncertainty that hangs like a sword of whether they would complete their MBBS degree in 5.5 years or 7.5 or (depending on the MCI’s whims) 10 years.

Jokes apart, I understand when the Government says that this move is being undertaken due to the shortage of more than seven lakh doctors in the rural areas. But forcing people to go for a rural stint is not a solution and increasing the duration of MBBS degree is definitely not the way to go to find more doctors. Because while you can make the rural posting mandatory but what will you do when people will not turn up to work there?

Most medical students I spoke to were not against rural posting. Instead their only request was that the authorities add the rural posting to their existing curriculum without stretching the total course duration of 4.5+1 years.

Also, wouldn’t it be a better way to get doctors to work at rural locations by giving them some incentives to go there? Make rural postings optional, and if students do opt for it, then give them attractive salaries or perks. Another way by which most students would prefer to opt for rural postings is if the government provides some leverage to such students in their MD entrances. Such positive steps would probably trigger fresh enthusiasm in students to sincerely consider working in villages and other remote areas.

Things which cannot be accomplished by force can sometimes be accomplished by sound thinking and an encouraging nudge. All it requires is a healthy understanding of the situation along with keeping the best interests of students in mind.