I went to the dispensary near my house to collect the medicines prescribed by the doctor a few days ago. This was the only dispensary in the locality where medicines were stocked decently. People waited in the queue for hours to get theirs, but the insufficient number of fans and lack of proper seating arrangement made it extremely difficult to stand in the queue.
While I was busy observing the infrastructure of the place, I realised that it was thirty minutes since I started waiting and with each passing minute, people were getting restless. They began talking loudly to each other and started complaining about the system. I could see that the person inside the counter was clearly disturbed by people’s behaviour.
After waiting for an hour and a half, I finally got my medicines. But it was only on returning home, that I discovered that wrong medicines were handed over to me. I rushed to the dispensary immediately and went straight inside the counter. On entering the room I saw that the person was surrounded by medicines on all sides stacked around him in the most unorganised manner. He told me that he worked continuously from early morning till late afternoon and did not have time to take proper breaks either. However, the man apologised and handed over the correct medicines.
By narrating this experience, I want to draw the attention of the readers towards the fact that doctors and staff in hospitals, especially government hospitals, are not provided with an appropriate working environment. Each and every staff member in the hospital works really hard to provide the best health services to the people.
But what do they get in turn from society? Quite recently, instances of violence have been reported against doctors and other medical staff. On reading articles in the newspaper about the mishaps in hospitals, we feel that it is our duty to question the competence of the entire medical system in the country without even thinking for a second that these are the very people who work day and night to save lives of the people.
While people hardly think about the problems of the doctors, the medical education system of our country is also not very kind towards them. Long hours of classes and immense pressure for clearing NEET are not the only problems they have to face. There are several other issues that continue to plague the medical education of our country.
1) Low Number Of Medical Colleges
It is a widely known fact that India does not have sufficient doctors for the needs of the burgeoning population. Data shows that India has one government (allopathic) doctor for every 11,082 patients, one government hospital bed for every 1,844 patients and one state-run hospital for every 55,591 patients. WHO prescribes a doctor-patient ratio of 1:1000. To meet the same, India would need at least 5 lakh more doctors. While India has the highest number of medical colleges, small graduating class strengths of 100-150 students create a major problem for a population of this size.
In a New Indian Express report, former governor of the Medical Council of India (MCI), Dr Devi Shetty, stated that India has approximately 300 medical colleges producing 30,000-35,000 graduates every year, whereas the need is that of 500 new medical colleges, producing one million doctors every year.
2) Outdated Syllabus
According to an article published by The Hindu, the MBBS curriculum was revised after 21 years, this year. This means that all these years, medical students were taught outdated or incomplete syllabus. There are regular breakthroughs that take place in the medical field every day, but the syllabus in India is not updated accordingly. Additionally, neither does the syllabus cover the new domains of medical science nor is the technology used extensively for training the students.
In a conversation with Campus Watch, Shyamli Mishra, a student at Triveni Dental College, said, “various new scientific discoveries are being made in the healthcare sector. Still, the medical colleges in our country continue with their old syllabus and hardly make changes in the curriculum of the students. This not only prevents the students from getting exposure to new technologies but also increases the time required for diagnosing and treating the disease.”
3) Private Medical Colleges
The opening up of private hospitals has commercialised our medical education to a great extent. Students who are unable to secure seats in government medical colleges pay hefty fees and take admissions in private colleges. The quality of education in private colleges is not at par with the government ones. This is because the treatment in most private medical colleges is costly and the patient load is poor with bed occupancy less than 50%, depriving the medical students of the constant and continuous availability of patients for exam and learning skills.
4) Rampant Corruption
According to a report by India Today, some of the medical institutes in our country are pre-blocking seats for low-ranking MBBS hopefuls in exchange for heavy donations. The article stated that Meerut’s Mulayam Singh Yadav Medical College’s (not linked to the Samajwadi Party founder) CEO, Dr Himani Agarwal, offered a medical slot in her institute for a donation of Rs 15 lakh per underperforming applicant.
“NEET was introduced by the government to bring down cases of corruption. But colleges still charge huge amount of money by giving admission to the students through management quota,” a student told Campus Watch on the condition of anonymity.
Medical aspirants spend sleepless nights to clear the NEET exam. Even after clearing the exam, they have to work extremely hard and undergo long training hours to become a doctor. As doctors, their day is usually hectic as they have to cater to a large number of patients who come to the hospital. Yet, the system is not very helpful for them. People behave rudely, sometimes resorting to violent means and seriously injuring doctors, as we have seen in West Bengal recently. We must be empathetic towards them and there must be proper guidelines to ensure their safety, along with improved academic opportunities.