I am in favour of the National Exit Exam for real skill enhancement: AIIMS Bhopal Director

AIIMS Bhopal Executive Director Dr Ajai Singh is a pediatric orthopaedic with pioneering work in emergency medicine, read here the excerpts of the interview.

Shiksha spoke to AIIMS Bhopal Executive Director Dr Ajai Singh and discussed various things including NEXT, delayed admission cycles and various research areas of the institute, read here to know the details.

Q: What are the challenges and opportunities of heading an institution like AIIMS? What are your priority areas?

A: The main challenge for any institute including the AIIMS Bhopal is that there is a large number of patients coming directly to us without any referral system from the peripheral , so they come without any appointment, whether we have beds or not, without knowing about the limitations for our resources. When they come, they come with a great amount of expectations. As a consequence, sometimes due to more number of patients, we are not able to cater them as good as we want. Though we do our best even then, some gaps are there.

Another challenge is that the manpower is limited as nearly 40% of posts are still vacant, we are working on the outsourced manpower, which is not committed to AIIMS. So that is another problem. The next issue is the net connectivity problems inside the AIIMS building because it is constructed like that inside the campus the connectivity is compromised. So, there are net safety problems are also there as we have seen in AIIMS Delhi. 

We working on the digitalisation and paperless system but one of the challenges is poor connectivity. So, these are some of the challenges and priority areas are for PG teaching training, we have to do some innovative things in teaching training of our UG and PG students, the skill enhancement of our faculty members is another area we are focussing, another priority areas include collaborative research, round the clock emergency and diagnostic services, and achieving excellence in the patient care by starting organ transplant such as bone marrow transplant, to construct an apex pediatric centre, the only centre in Central India which will cater all type of children under one roof and trauma centre on the term of New Delhi apex trauma centre and one institute of public health is also in our priority area and we are very soon going to start the construction of 150 bedded critical care unit that will be the only critical care unit in the whole of Central India. 

Q: What are your focus areas as Director of AIIMS Bhopal to make the institute one of the best medical colleges in India?

 A: As I have already discussed my priority areas are teaching, training, research and patient care. So if I would be able to work on all these four areas along with outreach programs, we also do outreach programs, which means going directly to the public. 

We are in the process of starting MD family medicine, which will cater to a large number of requirements of the community. So, these are things by which we can be amongst the best medical institutes.

Q: How did the admission cycle in AIIMS Bhopal got affected due to delays in counselling during the pandemic?

A: That was everywhere and not only in AIIMS Bhopal because our counselling is Central counselling. The students which were supposed to join in the month of January or July but in place of July, they came around September. So, the whole cycle was disturbed and the examination and everything were disturbed but slowly we are curtailing the number of leaves so that we can streamline.

Q: Many states are increasing the number of medical colleges, how this will affect the admissions and seat allocation process? Do AIIMS Bhopal has enough faculty members to teach if the seats get increased?

A: As far as UG and PG teaching is concerned, AIIMS Bhopal is having faculty members, that is not a problem with us but in principle I am not in very much in favour of increasing the number of medical colleges because I know many places where medical colleges are there but the faculties are not there, you are admitting the students and no teacher is there, so it will adversely affect the medical education.

Q: The national medical council is intending to replace NEET-PG, FMGE and MBBS finals with National Exit Exam (NeXT), how do you see this and what changes will it bring?

A:I am in favour of the National Exit Exam (NeXT) because previously internship was meant to get the physical training on-site. But because the students were preparing for NEET PG, so they were not able to concentrate on the internship. If the National Exit Exam will occur at the time of exit from the MBBS course, then a one-year internship will be able to give them the opportunity to work in the wards with the patients, to get a real sense of skill enhancement. So, I am very much in favour of this.

Q: How does the 27% OBC reservation in AIQ for MBBS/BDS admission impacted the seat matrix?

A: It is a government policy, a government mandate, so there is no harm in the 27% OBC reservation. The matrix will not be adversely impacted because the needy students of the OBC category will come and fill the seats and I am not of the opinion that reservation should not be there but I feel the reservation of good students should be there whether they belong to SC, OBC or any other category.

Q: Which are the new research areas the AIIMS Bhopal is exploring?

A:There are a few research areas on which we are focussing, one is the rare diseases, because, in the tribal areas of MP, sickle cell anaemia, and haemophilia-type diseases are there. So we are doing research on rare diseases. There is a very high mother and unit mortality rate in our part, so we are working on that, trauma services in MP and Central India is not so good, so we are also doing research related to trauma and of course, the last but not the least the AYUSH collaborative research, which is the alternative medicine with the modern medicine collaboration in the research

Q: Do you support the combination of modern medicines with alternative medicines?

A: Yes, I am very much in favour of this collaboration because I strongly feel that these alternative medicines are not unscientific but scientific science and we are forgetting our old traditions, that’s why we are not able to understand them. If the collaborative research will continue with the objective parameters of modern medicine, I am very much sure that the evidence will be produced in favour of the collaboration of modern and alternative medicines.

Q: Tell us about academic and research collaboration with other institutions AIIMS Bhopal is working on.

A: We are already working with different AIIMS in India and we are going for faculties and students exchange programmes. I have proposed an exchange program and I am waiting for the response from other AIIMS and other than AIIMS, we are working with other national institutes of importance such as CMC Vellore. 

 We have signed MoU with IIM Indore so that they can come and study our problems and do the gap analysis so that we can improve our efficiencies. 

We are also working with Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya Bhopal. The main thing is that we have to make a paperless system and in this, Artificial Intelligence and internet connectivity are the areas in which we need to work and this Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya is one of the best universities in this area. So, we are working with them also.

Read more:

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• Delay in NEET PG 2021 Counselling is overall a sad state, says AIIMS Nagpur Director