JOIN USMedical education has to be driven by societal values in addition to its intellectual content.
The recent strike by doctors and nurses in Karnataka has left patients neglected beyond words, even after the strike was called off. It speaks very poorly of the quality of students who graduate from our medical colleges. In fact, it reflects on medical education itself. If all those years of qualifying and specialising in the art of healing did not instil a sense of responsibility and commitment in those who opted for this course of study, our medical education system has failed badly.
When medical colleges are established, we rationalise the Medical Council of India's (MCI) norms in terms of “teacher student ratio, land requirement, bed strength, bed occupancy, maximum admission capacity, age of teaching faculty etc, etc, etc.” But, have we ever considered the suitability or aptitude of the students who choose to become doctors? Do we have special programmes to teach them how to place service before self in the profession they have chosen?
Under pressure
When a student opts for a medical course in response to peer or parental pressure, where is the assurance that he will make a good doctor? A medical degree, obtained at great financial costs, is viewed as the gateway to a lucrative career.
Neither the admitting authorities, teachers nor parents pause to wonder if this was the right course of study. How many ‘brilliant’ candidates who made it to that elite medical college switch over to a management course or the administrative services?
A medical career is just one more option for a ‘bright future’ just like any other which rakes in money, power and influence. But, this is one career that relates to the health of other persons, sometimes affecting their lives. Does the so called ‘counselling’ offered before admission to medical colleges teach the prospective doctors these truths?
Hardly.India is believed to have the largest number of medical colleges in the world, annually producing over 30,000 doctors and 18,000 specialists. South India alone has 157 – many of dubious quality - threatening to unleash 1,520 more ‘healers’ this academic year which has seen the highest increase in under-graduate and post-graduate medical seats in the country.
Compared to countries like America or Europe, which annually produce an average of 100 to 125 well qualified doctors per college, our medical college statistics seem to speak of quantity rather than quality. Quite often, these colleges are floated by politicians themselves who have understood that establishing a medical college is the surest way to prosperity and clout.
Important bodies like the MCI which are supposed to verify the antecedents of these institutions have been known to join hands with college trustees to certify that the institution satisfies all the norms laid down in the rule book. There is that instance of an unrecognised medical college in Karnataka which continued to admit students year after year allowing 14 batches of unrecognised doctors and specialists to graduate from its portals!
Medicare has turned out to be a sad story of exploitation. Can poor and illiterate patients recognise the difference between a well qualified doctor and a quack who poses as one? When doctors live in ivory towers and treat patients like numbers, the very concept of medicare is lost.
The relationship between a doctor and patient is based on trust and confidence. Humanity is the hallmark of good medicare. Where is the humanity when doctors desert their post and leave thousands of patients uncared and untreated? If their medical education did not teach them compassion along with medicine, it was an incomplete education leaving them doctors not worth the name.
Medical education has to be driven by societal values in addition to its intellectual content. In a country like ours where primary health care is the greatest medical need, our medical colleges must ensure that future doctors practise medicine in a manner consistent with the needs of the people. It is not enough to study diseases, their diagnosis and prognosis.
Medical students should be taught the behavioural and ethical aspects of healthcare. The public has high expectations of doctors. The least it expects is kindness and consideration from those it regards as the healers of all ills. If doctors fail in this respect, medicare has lost out. When they desert their patients –for whatever grouses they may have – they have violated the sacred oath they took.
A doctor can experience the joy of healing those who seek his help not by striking work and deserting his patients, but by rememberering that he chose a profession where “warmth, sympathy and understanding can outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemists’ drug.”