Published on September 22, 2017

National Medical Commission seeks to replace Medical Council of India with a promise to create world-class medical education system. Recently, Brookings India published an impact series of effectiveness and recommendations to be considered to be able to create a world class medicine system. Here is a short excerpt of major recommendation from  the report.

The Medical Council of India (MCI) has been criticised time and again for corruption and for providing opaque accreditation to aspiring medical colleges in India. Considering this situation, NITI Aayog proposed replacing MCI with a new National Medical Commission. This new body will be responsible for the accreditation of all medical education institutions within the country as well as maintaining a national registrar of all certified allopathic medical practitioners.

The Brookings institute recently published a report after analysing the current state of medical education accreditation and the globally practised ways. This report proposes key recommendations which can help curb the current exploitation of resources and bring India in line with international standards.

The major recommendation in the report highlights that members of National Medical Commission should be excluded from the Medical Advisory Council. This will be a huge step to promote autonomy, divide power and keep a check on corruption.

Lack of research and lack of quality literature in India’s medical fraternity has been lacking and has been criticised globally. Keeping this in view, a major recommendation is to include research as a fundamental component for accreditation of postgraduate medical colleges.  The report recommends encouraging competition by creating regional medical councils in the place of third party organisations.

It also says that adopting World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines should be the basis of all standards set by the Under-Graduate Medical Education Board and the Post-Graduate Medical Education Board. A mandatory framework for medical practice should be formulated by introducing a mandatory three-year work period for all graduating students of medical institutions. The paper highlights that there is also a need to review section 7.2 of Indian Medical Council Professional Conduct, Etiquette, and Ethics Regulation, 2002 and clarify minimum medical procedures that both MBBS doctors and qualified nurses are permitted to conduct.

The report strongly believes that these interventions can lead to noteworthy, remarkable improvements in the accreditation system of medical education in India. The report also talks about global best practices, overview of medical education in India and various cases of corruption reported so far.

The full report by Dr. Shamika Ravi, Dhruv Gupta and Jaclyn Williams published by Brookings India can be read here:

 

(This excerpt has been published with due permission from Brookings India).