NMC Bill 2019 and its impact on medical students

Dr Gaurav Thukral, Chief Operating Officer, HealthCare atHOME provides an insight into how life will change for medical students after the President gave his customary consent to the NMC Bill 2019

A medical student was till now segregating final year MBBS examination and pre PG entrance examination because of the following reasons.

• Final MBBS exam is practical and theory exam whereas pre PG exam is MCQs.
• Final MBBS exam has syllabus only for professionals whereas pre PG exam comprises all the subjects for 4.5 years.
• Final MBBS the competition is with only your own class in your college unlike with all students across the country and abroad too who wish to practice in India.

Passing all MBBS professionals and getting a internship completion certificate was the eligibility to be registered with MCI and allowed to practice in India – Now he / she has to clear the NEXT or the licentiate examination for practising medicine.

Medical students will have to undergo a foundation course to get acclimatised to empathy and patient interactions.

Although the health minister has mandated that this will become a norm in the next three years or so but the confusion is writ large on the following issues:

• Will the next exam have syllabus restricted to final MBBS or all professionals as it’s also the basis of PG entrance.
• What will be the pattern of examination – MCQ / theory / practical?
• In case of practical how do you take care of standardisation and ameliorating local biases.
• What happens if you fail the exam? When do you get a chance to appear again? Can you practice in the interim?
• Combining all exam of all premier institute is restricting opportunities for students?

Also there is not much clarity on the following aspects which is the need of the hour:

• Like in the west will the curriculum from third year onwards, focusses more on the speciality to be taken up post MBBS.
• Will topics like IoT, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning be integrated to make medicos more tech savvy.
• Will MBA topics like understanding balanced scorecards or simple financials and accounting, which is so important for doctors, be inducted in the syllabus.
• Like industry experiences, will medical students be exposed to various facets of private healthcare players beyond their own medical college.

With NMC now becoming a reality, the above has been compiled basis inputs received from the students of AIIMS, Bhopal and Grants Medical College, Mumbai. The students are of the view that common Final next exam is a welcome step but combining it with pre PG exam in present grey zone scenarios is a worrisome issue .