Ghost faculty, low attendance in majority of medical colleges: NMC

A majority of the medical colleges assessed in 2022-23 were found to have ghost faculty and senior residents, and none of the institutes met the requirement of 50 per cent attendance, the National Medical Commission has said.

The NMC said it found that none of them visit the emergency department regularly "because there is no one in the emergency medicine department to interact with them other than the casualty medical officer".

"The posting in the emergency medicine department is supposed to be a break period for the students," the Under-Graduate Medical Education Board of the NMC said.

The NMC said this in a reply to the Associations of Emergency Physicians of India over their grievance regarding the exclusion of emergency medicine speciality as a requirement for setting up new medical colleges.

In a recently notified regulation, the NMC excluded the requirement of an emergency department for setting up new medical colleges.

Earlier, in its June 23 draft, emergency medicine department was among the 14 departments that new medical colleges approved for undergraduate admissions must have.

In its reply to the AEPI dated September 22, the UGMEB said the real picture on emergency medicine departments is different from what it looks like on paper.

"While checking the Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance of these colleges, we were shocked to note that there was 100 per cent failure in all colleges with respect to the faculty and senior resident doctors employed to fulfil the requirements as per the MSR (minimum standard requirement) 2020. Majority of the colleges had ghost faculty and SRS (senior residents) or had not employed the required faculty at all," the commission said in the reply.

The attendance was evaluated randomly at any time of the year during the working days at a stretch for about two months, the board said.

"After warning the colleges for deficiencies and after giving them adequate time to fulfil deficiencies, none of the colleges met with the requirement of even 50 per cent attendance. Zero attendance was still common. This only establishes that although on paper the data is 134 colleges with emergency medicine departments, the facts are far from the depicted picture," the reply stated.

The UGMEB relies more on artificial intelligence for assessing the functionality of a medical college and affiliated hospital through the digital mission mode project installed in NMC, it said.

It said the attendance is assessed through Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System, classroom teaching, and hospital functioning through this mode.

The number of medical colleges with functional academic emergency departments increased from 45 to 134 – a three-fold increase – along with an increase in MD emergency medicine seats from 120 to 462, the reply stated.

In total, 246 undergraduate medical colleges in 27 states were assessed for granting recognition or continuation of recognition for academic year 2022-23, the board said.

According to UGMEB's reply to AEPI, the authorities visited the colleges and found out that students do not go to the emergency medicine department regularly “because there is no one in the emergency medicine department to interact with them other than the casualty medical officer”.

“While interacting with PGMEB, we found out that the course curriculum suggested by experts ran into 300 pages and includes everything required in a hospital… Secondly, the problems at PG level are different which I shall not touch upon since these are beyond the purview of UGMEB," the reply stated.

This year also, the UGMEB officials interacted with all colleges from August 22 to 24 in which a total of 768 participants, and 92 university representatives, including vice chancellors. All issues, including the emergency medicine departments were discussed and a majority of all doubts of all participants were cleared, the reply said.