The union health ministry's proposal to introduce a test in every five years for practicing doctors to ensure they have upgraded their skills is causing concern among the medical fraternity in Karnataka.

The Indian Medical Association, Karnataka has strongly opposed the move. It has instead proposed more continuing medical education (CME) programme before going in for re-certification.

According to Dr. VC Shanmughanandan, vice president, IMA, Karnataka it is not a feasible proposition to conduct a test for all the medical practitioners. Instead of this, a re-registration of the certification through CME conducted for a few hours is a more viable option.

The Association has proposed to put up a 30-hours training through CMEs a year as the minimum requirement for doctors. It has also offered to function as a nodal agency for the programme.

Dr. PS Prabhakaran, director, Kidwai Institute of Oncology opined the first task on hand for the government is to ban the 1.5 lakh quacks from practicing instead of conducting exams for the qualified doctors. "It does not make sense to make doctors and specially the oncologists who already have the expertise gathered over years of practice to make them appear for re-certification," he added.

Dr. S Chandrashekar Shetty, former vice chancellor, Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences stated that there was no need to make doctors who have done the CME programmes to undergo the tests. Only if doctors who have failed to qualify for the certification, then the question of tests arises for them.

A section of doctors from corporate hospitals doing private practice stated that such tests should not aim at disqualifying doctors but only to assess if they are in touch with the developments in medical field. "Doctors should know for themselves where they stand in the profession," he added.

However, there were doctors on the other side of the fence who were appreciative of the tests. "Re-certification exists in the West. Similar grade systems exist in all professional fields," informed Dr. Vivek Jawali, cardiologist, Wockhardt Hospital and Heart Institute.

Some others like Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, managing director, Narayana Hrudayalaya said that government should initiate CMEs and introduce ranking systems to start off with.

Dr. Anil B Agadi, Laproscopic surgeon, Agadi Hospital stated that CMEs should be conducted for doctors in the rural areas to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field.