The Medical Council of India has decided not to give any extra time to students who do not clear their professional exams within nine years of admission.
This is a
situation that not many were aware of before entering the profession.
Until not, there was no upper limit to the number of attempts to passing the MBBS course. Last week, taking a stand on the matter, the Medical Council of India announced that a time limit will now be exercised. No additional time will be given to those students who do not clear their professional exams within nine years from the date of admission in a medical college. The MCIs governing body has agreed that alt145 a student shall not be allowed to graduate later than nine years of joining first MBBS course.alt39The decision has probably stemmed from the action of failures at a particular medical university, where authorities did not know what to do with the chronic failures.
An additional change that is brought about is about number of attempts for taking a professional exam. Hence forth students will have only four attempts to clear the first university professional exams. This course must be completed within four years of admission. Partial attendance in an examination in any subject shall be counted as an attempt.
Hence forth, the new medical student entrants will be taking a compulsory foundation course for two months. This bridge course is to orient them to the MBBS programme and imparting the skills needed for the course, both technical and soft sills. It will be of two months duration. The regulations say that the first two months of the first year would be dedicated to the foundation course.
Students who do not have at least 75 per cent attendance in the foundation course classes will not be eligible for the phase- I examination.
‘There is lot of scope in manipulating the 75 per cent attendance. The MCI must clearly devise and communicate to medical colleges a fool proof method of recording attendance.
Foundation course should be a probationary period and only those who are assessed to be a suitable candidate for medical discipline should be admitted and for this person initially more than sanctioned strength should be assessed,’says HSC science student Abhijeet Shinde.
According to others, what Shinde has pointed out is a minute problem. The major issue is that of time, and hence, students are worried.
‘God forbid that I face a problem within my MBBS years and need to take a break. That would just put too much pressure to finish on time!’says second year MBBS student Swati Mehra. Even if this a personal stand taken by her, there are others who agree with the rule.
‘My point is that if a person cannot clear the exams in nine years, the actual duration of which four and a half years, what kind of professional doctor is he or she going to be? Will they even be in position to actually treat the patients?’questions final year MBBS student Aniket Parekh. He adds that there are certain exceptional cases where students have to a year or semester, but even then, nine years is enough time, he thinks.
Other students, on the other hand, agree with the decision. ‘Almost every programme or course has is time- bound. Why not medicine then? In fact, until now I was not aware that there was not a time limit and that a student can continue for years on an end, but once I have heard the news, I totally agree. Once students are already in their professional courses, no special treatment should be meted out to any particular field,’says third- year biomedical engineering student Suhas Pant, who had actually aimed at MBBS first, and keenly follows
