Medical Council of India’s Amended Qualifications for Indian Medical Teachers: Well Intended, Yet Half-hearted
| Autor: | Sunita V S Bandewar, Amita Aggarwal, Rajeev Kumar, Rakesh Aggarwal, Peush Sahni, Sanjay A Pai |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Medical Sciences and Health, Vol 4, Iss 1, Pp 1-4 (2018) |
| Druh dokumentu: | article |
| ISSN: | 2394-9481 2394-949X |
| Popis: | The Medical Council of India (MCI) must be commended for its efforts to introduce definitive criteria for appointments and promotions for teachers in medical institutions. On June 8, 2017, the MCI issued a circular[1] to amend the Minimum Qualifications for Teachers in Medical Institutions Regulations, 1998 (henceforth Regulations, 1998).[2] The amendment clarifies the minimum qualifications required for various postgraduate teaching positions in medical colleges. It indicates MCI’s sustained engagement with qualifications of teachers in medical colleges, with the aim of enhancing the quality of teaching, and thereby, the quality of medical professionals passing out. However, we believe that these efforts continue to be inadequate in addressing the varied issues that face medical education and the educators in India. Some of these issues are: (i) The lack of transparency in the manner in which new medical colleges is approved, (ii) the variation in the proportion of private and public medical colleges across states, (iii) the lack of change and innovation in the undergraduate and postgraduate medical curricula to keep up with changing needs, (iv) the poor uptake of newer teaching-learning methods, (v) the poor quality of teachers in several medical colleges, (vi) methods used to assess teachers during selection and promotions, and (vii) failure to assess the impact of policy changes (such as a recent increase in the number of postgraduate seats) on the quality of medical education and training. In this editorial, we focus on one of these issues, i.e.,the appointment and promotion of teachers in medical colleges. The MCI had on September 3, 2015,[3] stated its requirements with regard to research publications for eligibility for promotion of faculty members in medical colleges. This had been critiqued[4,5] mainly on four counts: Exclusion of publications in “electronic-only” journals from consideration for the assessment of performance, awarding points only to original research articles or papers, awarding points only to the first or second authors, and the choice of indexing services for assessing the quality of a journal. While lauding the MCI’s efforts toward improving the standards for teaching faculty at medical colleges in India, these critiques argued that an ill-informed framework for determining eligibility for promotion is likely be self-defeating and even harmful to the profession. |
| Databáze: | Directory of Open Access Journals |
| Externí odkaz: |
|