The Medical Council of India (MCI) has received good response from the medical, healthcare fraternity, students and other stake holders on the proposed undergraduate and postgraduate medical education reports, the main components of ‘Vision – 2015’ document dealing with reforms in the present medical education in the country.
Senior officials in the MCI said that while compiling the final documents, all these responses will be considered and accordingly incorporated. Earlier, the Board of Governors of the MCI had put the vision document on public domain for getting comments and suggestions of the medical fraternity, policy makers, professional organizations and other stake holders.
The MCI had earlier developed a ‘Vision-2015’ document to reform the medical education in the country and also to evolve a roadmap for the direction of medical education in India in alignment with national needs. It was also aimed to evolve a broad policy regarding the emphasis, duration and curricular changes that could be adopted as future strategies to make medical education in India comparable to global standards.
The main components of the Vision-2015 documents are reforms in under graduate and post graduate medical education in India. The vision document also aims to evolve strategies and futuristic plans so that medical education in India is innovative and is able to prepare undergraduates to be able to perform in the changing scenario of medical science. In the light of deteriorating medical education standards in the country, the document provides a roadmap to work on parallel tracks for immediate solutions and long term improvement in a steady and phased manner.
Apart from several measures, the expert panel has recommended that the doctor-population ratio should be raised from the present 1:1700 to 1:1000 by 2031. For achieving this target and taking into consideration of existing medical colleges in the country, it was felt that the current intake of medical colleges and the critical mass of doctors should be doubled at least to achieve this target. The world average of doctor-population ratio is 1.5:1000.
The panel has also recommended sweeping reforms in improving quality of training and the curriculum of the medical education in the country.