MBBS students must train in emergency care

90 per cent minimum marks to pass internship; RGUHS ties up with US varsity for programme.

 From this year onwards, MBBS students will have to compulsorily undergo training in emergency medical care during their internship. 

Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) will launch a programme on Monday on Comprehensive Emergency Care and Life Support (ECLS) titled ‘Jeeva Raksha – Saving Lives, Assuring Care’ which will be a mandatory part of the curriculum. 

The credits will be assigned to the course as part of the house surgency, and students need to secure at least 90 per cent to successfully complete it. The internship will be considered incomplete unless this course is cleared, the university’s vice-chancellor, Dr Sriprakash K S, told reporters here on Friday. 

Dr Sriprakash said that much of the focus of healthcare policies was on primary care. Emergency medical care has been underemphasised. Various studies have shown an increased need for critical care emergencies. India accounts for 10 per cent of road crashes worldwide. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the death rate in road traffic accidents per one-lakh population has increased from 16.8 in 2009 to 18.9 in 2013. The training in emergency medical care is not, however, limited to accidents, and includes paediatric and obstetric emergencies, he said. 

Faculty from the University of Utah, USA, will train the master trainers for this programme. About 15 doctors, including faculty from medical colleges and private hospital professionals, will take part in the training as part of the launch. The session will be spread over five days and the US faculty will visit Bangalore thrice a year over the next five years to train the master trainers who will later train students and other faculty. 

The course, RGUHS officials said, combines emergency medical care and life support. It focuses on training at least 100 master trainers every year. In the first phase (the first three years), about 300 master trainers will be trained. Each group of three master trainers will in turn train about 240 interns and doctors every year at a rate of eight batches per year, including 30 trainees per batch. 

The programme aims to have at least six master trainers in every district. The idea is to build a capacity to train 24,000 medical professionals per year by June 2017, Sriprakash explained. The university estimates that the course will address the needs of over 40,000 doctors and 4,000 interns in the State every year. 

To begin with, the training will be conducted at the skill centre of the Bangalore Medical College and Research Centre. It would eventually be made mandatory for all medical institutions in the State to have a skill centre which would allow students to practise on mannequins first before using their skills on patients, the V-C said.