Doctors, students oppose changes proposed by Medical Council in MBBS curriculum

The Medical Council of India (MCI) Vision 2015 document is proving to be a bitter pill for medical faculty and students to swallow, who say the new syllabusu00a0-- which proposes reducing the course period by a year, among other thingsu00a0-- is disastrous.


JJ Hospital doctors protest against MCI's proposals for a new
MBBS syllabus Pic/ Bipin Kokate

The MCI's suggestions, which were released last month, propose that subjects like Forensic, orthopedics, anaesthesia, radiology, psychiatry, opthalmology, ENT, skin and veneral diseases be made optional.

Senior doctors and students from various state and civic run hospitals wore black badges on Saturday to protest against these proposals.

General Secretary of Medico-legal Association of Maharashtra, Dr S Nanandkar said, "The current governing MCI body was constituted to look into the administrative work of the council and not to make such policy decisions.
u00a0
By doing away with subjects like forensics, the medical graduate will be not equipped to handle medico-legal cases. How can they forget that crime is a social disease?"

General Secretary of Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors Dr Mangesh Lone said, "The MCI should think of increasing the number of teachers to increase the number of students.

Such steps will only make the quality of education substandard and will prove beneficial only to private medical colleges, who face a problem finding teachers for these subjects."

"We have already established a task force to take legal action," added Nanandkar.