Can Faculty sharing between medical colleges solve medical teaching crisis? Here's what health ministry said
Faculty Shortage
New Delhi: Contemplating a solution for faculty shortage, the Union Health Ministry is open to faculty sharing between medical colleges as it plans to add 10,000 new medical seats in the upcoming academic year i.e. 2025-2026, Business Standard has reported.
While speaking about this possibility, the Union Health Secretary Punya Salia Srivastava said that several experts had given recommendations to expand the faculty pool by permitting the sharing of the faculties between the medical colleges, especially in non-clinical subjects.
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As per the latest media report by Business Standard, the Ministry may seek consultations from the stakeholders to finalize a roadmap to meet the faculty requirements and development in May this year.
Currently, the Union Health Ministry is assessing issues including faculty shortage. Further, it is also contemplating how to modernize the curriculum for medical students, ensure that medical education is affordable, and expand postgraduate (PG) and specialization courses.
Business Standard has reported that in order to enhance medical education infrastructure, the Ministry will also aim to map existing undergraduate (UG), PG, and super-speciality course seats in government medical colleges and strengthen a public-private partnership (PPP) model.
Union Health Secretary Srivastava said that the Ministry will also assess potential facilities for commencing Diplomate of National Board (DNB) courses and identify private hospitals to start standalone PG institutes by September 2025.
Also Read: PM Modi Announces Addition Of 75,000 More Medical seats
She further added, "A shift to Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) has also been recommended to focus on practical skills and patient-centric care."
Apart from this, the Ministry is also chalking out a deadline-bound implementation to set up 200 daycare cancer centres (DCCCs) and add 10,000 medical seats in 2025-2026.
Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Central Government's plans to add 75,000 new medical seats in five years. Recently, in her Budget announcement, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman made the same announcement. Sitharaman also announced the aim to add 200 cancer day-care centres by Financial Year 2026 to ensure that cancer treatment becomes more accessible to people in the country.
"Around 13,000 medical seats have been added in FY25, and we will be adding 10,000 seats this year," Union Health Minister reiterated the Government's plans once more in the webinar held to discuss possible pathways to implement health-related Budget announcements.
Also Read: 75,000 new doctors in next five years, 10000 this year: Minister JP Nadda
Further, the Government is also planning to establish DCCCs in all district hospitals in the next three years, of which 200 are set to be opened in FY 2026, to strengthen cancer care.
Already the Ministry has identified shortage of manpower, lack of training and no referral system between different strata of health centres. It is now aiming to start by commissioning a gap analysis and surveys to identify high-need areas for DCCC implementation by April 2025.
"The ministry is looking to leverage PPPs for expertise, resources, equipment, training and financial sustainability of DCCC," the Health Secretary said.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that the Post Budget webinar also included a session by a Health Ministry Panel, which discussed issues like faculty shortage, reforms in MBBS curriculum, ways to improve doctor-population ratio in India, implementing e-learning platforms to standardise medical education, faculty development programme etc.
The Health Ministry's session on "Expansion of Medical Education" was held from 9:00 AM to 6:30 PM and it was chaired by the Director of AIIMS Delhi, Dr. M Srinivas. It also included discussions by Dr B N Gangadhar, Chairman of the National Medical Commission (NMC), Dr. Abhijath Seth, the President of the National Board of Examinations, Dr. Rajiv Bahl, DG ICMR and Secretary DHR, Dr G D Puri from AIIMS Jodhpur, Prof Suneela Garg, Sanjeev Singh among others.
Addressing the issue of faculty shortage across medical colleges, the President of the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS), Dr. Abhijath Seth talked about the possibility of creating a national pool of faculty. Terming it as a "novel concept", he added that this could be one of the "innovative tools to address the shortage of faculties".
Dr. Seth suggested increasing the age limit for the teachers, incentivizing and giving recognition to the teachers for their noble contributions to teaching and training as possible measures to make the profession of joining the medical colleges as faculties a good career path.
He also added that the national pool of faculty should also include healthcare professionals who would like to contribute pro bono. Dr. Seth also said to identify the legendary role models and mentors across the country.
