Rank Service PG Medicos Separately for District Residency Programme, Post them Based on Seniority: Doctors tell TN Govt

Chennai: Pointing out that the service postgraduate students are seniors by age at the time of joining the MD/MS courses, the Service Doctors and Post Graduates (SDPGA) authorities have urged the State Government authorities to rank them separately for the District Residency Programme (DRP).

Further, the association has urged the Directorate of Medical Education (DME) to give them postings for the DRP on the basis of service seniority instead of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) score.

Such requests have been made by the association when the score in the NEET Postgraduation examination is used as the criteria to rank postgraduate medical students in the State for DRP postings, depending on the option forms received from them.

The District Residency Programme was proposed by the National Medical Commission back in 2021 with the aim of "strengthening of services of the District Health System". NMC had earlier mentioned about the programme at the District Hospitals in the Draft Regulations on Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations 2021.

Also Read: Telangana rearranges accommodation facilities for 800 PG medical students for DRP in remote areas

It was proposed that all the PG medical students pursuing their MD/MS in broad specialities should undergo a compulsory residential rotation of three months in District Hospitals/ District Health Systems as a part of the course curriculum. The Commission had clarified that such rotation would take place in the 3rd or 4th or 5th semester of the Postgraduate programme.

However, DRP could not be properly implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic and later NMC PG Board made it mandatory for all the Postgraduate broad speciality students admitted in the 2021 batch onwards. Earlier this year, NMC addressed the doubts and confusion regarding the implementation of the programme and wrote to the Principal Secretary/ Secretary of Medical Education of all the States/UTs, the Directors of all the State/UT DMEs, and the Heads of all the medical institutes.

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that again releasing the Draft PGMER 2023, the NMC PG Board once again addressed the issue of the District Residency Programme and clarified that satisfactory completion of the DRP shall be an essential condition for the post-graduate candidates to be allowed to appear in the final examinations.

As per the latest media report by The Hindu, the SDPGA in Tamil Nadu pointed out that the service postgraduates were seniors by age as before joining the MD/MS courses, they are required to serve a minimum of two years in Tamil Nadu Government hospitals in order to become eligible for the course. Referring to this, the association argued that it is not justifiable to consider the service PGs alongside the non-service PGs.

Commenting on this, the President of SDPGA, P. Saminathan told the Daily, "If PGs are posted based on NEET marks, it will be against equitable distribution of resources."