Something more is missing... I see today’s student
lacking the knowledge and skills an MBBS graduate
ought to possess. The confidence of being able to
manage alone is missing. One of the causes is that
internship, which is planned to provide a compre-
hensive learning opportunity, is spent amidst books
with a burden, and not clinics and the community!
This amounts to depriving students of experiences
that they might never have again! To add to the con-
fusion even further, I find students putting efforts in
learning not getting through the PG entrance, while
those working suboptimally, do so just by a “targetted
approach”. Even at MBBS level, students who come
are already deprived of 2-3 years of social learning,
as most of them have not attended school after class
X and have spent all that time amidst competition at
coaching institutes.
Won’t it be better if my student can decide what
he wants to specialize in, and has the surety of getting
it so that he can concentrate more on achieving the
objectives of MBBS and enjoy the journey, carrying
pleasant memories for a lifetime? In fact, there’s so
much competition for MBBS, that you have so many
private colleges of variable quality. Not to mention
the many international colleges that are distributing
graduations without having the students touch even
one patient. And all of them could enter an auton-
omous institute like ours, by just cracking a PG En-
trance. Are we really on the right track of selecting
through the present system? We surely can change it!
Has the time not come yet?
But then, the need for change has to grow like a
movement. Only then can we be proud and main-
tain an edge, not only in PG, but also in UG medical
education.