National Board of Examination eyes to offer PG courses to 25,000 doctors by 2025

COIMBATORE The National Board of Examination (NBE) is eying to offer postgraduate medical courses t

The National Board of Examination (NBE) is eying to offer postgraduate medical courses to 25,000 students in 2025, said president of the medical education body Abhijat Sheth here on Friday. 

Speaking to reporters, he said the NBE, which serves 75 % of private organisations and 25 % government organisations, was offering courses to 12,300 students through a total of 1,100-odd institutions at present. “While going to the numbers, we want to ensure that the quality of education should also be focused and escalated to strengthen the postgraduate medical education,” he said. Stating that the available resources were “under-utilised”, Dr. Sheth said that the country was having adequate resources and infrastructure to achieve the target. “We are not utilising our resources as effectively as it should be. We are having two systems – the private and government. Integrating the two medical systems for the purpose of medical education will certainly help us in the future,” he said. According to him, countries that have fully matured system, though not free of problems, have a PG to UG ratio of 2:1 while we have PG to UG of less than one. “So at least we are aiming to have a 1:1 ratio”, he said. “People may argue why we need so many doctors. It is not true. We need doctors… We may have full doctors in metros or big cities. But we need doctors in tier two cities and regional areas. Certainly, we need to have out of the box ideas to attract doctors to regional areas,” said Dr. Sheth. He said that the increase in the number of seats would also increase the number of faculty pool which is most needed to train future doctors. Dr. Sheth said the NBE has already started working to bring both public and private institutions together where a doctor can get exposure in the public institution and private institution under the ‘Group Accreditation’ programme, which will be rolled out in December this year. “Initially, it will be rolled out as a pilot project in limited institutions just to ensure that it is effectively utilised and bottlenecks are understood,” he said. Asked if there was any move to merge NBE with the National Medical Commission, Dr. Sheth said that “it may happen at a certain level as the philosophy is the same for PG medical education. At the moment, we feel that there are still complexities as NMC is a new body. Once the system matures to that level, possibly it may happen. That it may be better integrated for better utilisation of resources,” said Dr. Sheth, adding that an initial discussion had already taken place. Minu Bajpai, executive director of NBE, said that the PG seats increased from 4,000 to 12,300 in the last six years which is a 200 % increase. The Niti Ayog has asked the NBE to ramp it up to twice the numbers because of the trajectory and steepness of the achievement. The Group Accreditation will enable PG doctors to get trained in hospitals with a good case mix, he said. S. Rajasekaran of Ganga Hospital, Coimbatore, also the president of Association of National Board Accredited Institutions, said that nearly 85 % of all surgical cases and 63 % of all treatments done in the country are in the private sector, highlighting the vast resource base.