The doctors have sought to have a special subject on orthopaedic care in the under graduate level for the MBBS students which would give the upcoming doctors more awareness and knowledge in dealing with emergency accidents cases that usually involve orthopaedic specialists.

Experts at the Telangana Orthopaedic Surgeons Association Conference (TOSCON-2016) held in Hyderabad recently felt that with increased cases of accidents coming to the hospitals every day, there is a growing demand for better trauma care in which the orthopaedics is one of the most important subjects. At present the subject of orthopaedics is taught to the post graduate medical students under a specialization. The MBBS students do not have adequate training to deal with trauma cases that involve orthopaedic specialization and have to depend on the specialists which is tough to get during the emergency situations.

A large number of people are injured in road accidents every day and most of them require orthopaedic care. However, the subject of orthopaedics is covered extensively only in the post graduate programme, because of which the MBBS medical graduates are becoming handicapped to deal with cases involving orthopaedic specialization. “We need to have orthopaedics as a separate subject in undergraduate training of medical students. we have a large number of patients and trauma care emerging every day. It is high time MBBS doctors need to be trained in orthopaedics as a full subject,” opined Dr. K.J. Reddy, president of TOSA.

The 3-day TOSACON 2016 is one of the first annual conference held by Telangana Orthopaedic Surgeon's Association. It was inaugurated by Vishweshwar Reddy, Member of Parliament (MP). About 500 delegates from across the state were present in the event. Leading speakers who took part at the conference included Sangita Reddy, joint managing director of Apollo Hospitals; TOSA's chief patron Dr Jairamchander Pingle; Dr KJ Reddy, president; Dr Raghav Dutt, organising secretary and Dr P Sudhir Kumar, secretary.

Sangita Reddy expressed her concern over the huge gap in the skill capabilities of the post graduate medical students and said there is need to upgrade with continuous education and training.  “Indian doctors have excelled world over, but the core aspect we need to emphasise in India is life being precious and we need to ensure better emergency care,” opined Sangita Reddy.

While explaining the need for adding orthopaedic subject at MBBS level, Dr K J Reddy said “We need to have structured training programme which exposes PG students to all sub-specialties. In the MBBS curriculum orthopaedics is part of surgery, this is not doing justice to a vast and important specialty like orthopaedics, it needs to be delinked and taught as a separate subject, to train the undergraduate students in the basics of orthopaedic and skilled to handle basic trauma.”