Kerala Medicos allege delay in getting registrations from medical council
Kozhikode: Medical graduates from Kerala who have completed their training in modern medicine are facing a delay of up to two months to get their permanent registration certificates from the Kerala State Medical Council (KSMC), The Hindu has reported.
As per the existing rules, medical graduates must undergo a one-year mandatory internship in medical college hospitals after completing their four-and-a-half-year course.
For undergoing the internship, the students are given provisional registration certificates, and after successfully completing their internship, the medical graduates are supposed to approach the State Medical Council through their respective medical colleges and the Kerala University of Health Sciences (KUHS) for their permanent registration numbers and certificates.
To apply for permanent registration, the medicos need to upload the soft copies of the required documents online and send the hard copies to the Council by post. Thereafter, the Council examines and verifies the documents and grants permanent registration numbers and allots certificates to them.
Also Read: Doctors cannot feature in hospital ads: Kerala Medical Council issues warning
However, reportedly, the Council is allegedly delaying the process of granting permanent registration to the medicos. Commenting on the matter, some of the graduates from the 2019 MBBS batch told The Hindu on the condition of anonymity that a lot of time was being taken for the dispatch of the documents from the respective colleges and the KUHS.
Even though some of the graduates were being given the registration numbers over the phone, many others were left behind. Some of the students who graduated in the previous years claimed that they received their original registration certificates only after a month or two.
Since the students have not yet received their permanent registration, most of them are unable to apply for the tests conducted by Kerala Public Service Commission for various government posts during the period. Similar problems are being faced by students wishing to pursue higher studies. Commenting on this, G.S. Aswin Das, general secretary of the General Practitioners Association, a forum of MBBS doctors, said that many were not able to accept job offers as well.
"With just the registration number and without the original certificates, these doctors often don’t get employed in good hospitals. The KSMC should emulate the Karnataka Medical Council, which takes just a day to process the applications for registrations. If you apply for it in the morning, you can get the certificates by the evening," he told The Hindu. Dr. Das further alleged that when the medical graduates called KSMC staff seeking clarifications, there was no response from the side of the Council.
Meanwhile, G.S. Harikumaran Nair, president, KSMC (Modern Medicine) claimed that if all the documents were proper, there was no possibility of any delay. He pointed out that it would not take more than two weeks to process such applications.
However, he pointed out that when documents are sent in bulk from the medical colleges, the verification process becomes lengthy. He further added that sometimes delay is caused when some students do not respond to the updates related to the defects in their documents on the council's website or do not reply to the emails sent to them.
