St. John’s Medical College in its golden jubilee year 2014-15 has already opened the St John’s Oncology Centre, Unit of Hope for treatment of children with disabilities, renovated its auditorium and students’ dining hall last year. Now it is gearing up to commission its  new e-library facility and establishing a clinical skill laboratory to meet the basic and highly advanced training requirements of students and faculty as part of the 50th year commemoration.

The Golden Jubilee celebrations is being held on August 9, 2014 at its auditorium in Bengaluru. Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah is the Chief Guest.

Indicating the highlights of the 50 years, the college in a press release said that it annually reserves 15 medical seats for religious sisters, who permanently serve in rural areas.  It has also ensured a 2-year compulsory rural service bond for all students from 1973 itself, before the Karnataka government adopted the similar model of compulsory rural service for doctors on completion of MBBS course. Around 25 per cent of the its medical graduates are permanently settled and work in the undeserved and remote areas of Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Kashmir besides the tribal belts of Orissa, Assam and Meghalaya in addition to the Andaman and Nicobar islands.

The College trains Undergraduate Doctors, Post-graduate Doctors and Super-Speciality Doctors. The Department of Medical Education in the College conducts training programmes for teachers from medical colleges across the country with a separate Research Society offering round-the-year training and specialised programmes in research methodology.

It also offers super-specialty training courses in DM Cardiology, Endocrinology, Neonatology, Nephrology, Neurology, Gastroenterology, Pulmonary Medicine, Critical Care and Paediatric Nephrology.  The M.Ch. programme is for Surgical Oncology, Plastic Surgery, Paediatric Surgery, Neuro Surgery and Urology.

The college is among the first to include teaching of Medical Ethics as part of the MBBS curriculum and has a full-fledged Department of Medical Ethics. It is one of the few leading medical colleges in the country to have academic and scientific collaborations with National Institutes of Health, International Atomic Energy Agency, Welcome Foundation, WHO, Department of Science and Technology, Department of Biotechnology and Indian Institute of Science, Minnesota University USA, Tufts University Boston, Karolinska Institute, Sweden.

Further, the College received the Singh-Obama Award, a rare distinction for an Indian Medical College, and got itself connected with the Harvard School of Public Health under the Harvard-India Nutrition Initiative. The St John’s Medical College has the distinction of having as many as 6 Rhodes Scholarship winners, besides recipients of Pope Paul Awards.