National Exit Exam will add a lot to skill learning of medical students: Dean of MAMC, New Delhi

Dean of Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, Dr Ritu Arora spoke to Shiksha.com, read here to know in detail.

Established in 1958, Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC Delhi) is attached to the Lok Nayak Hospital. As per NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) 2021, the institute ranked 17. Dr Ritu Arora, the Dean of Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, spoke to Shiksha.com. Read here the excerpts from the interview:

Q: What are the challenges and opportunities of heading an institute like Maulana Azad Medical College and what are your priority areas?

A: The challenges are - its huge, because we have about 250 students joining every year, so it makes it five times 1250 students including the interns and we have 250 PG students and it is a sprawling campus and involves lots of other specialities, so biggest challenge is looking into the academic and overall development of students individually, giving them personal attention, that is the biggest challenge.

I came with lots of vision but now I think Covid has caught everything down. My priority area was into the academics and the overall co-curricular development of students and making Maulana Azad Medical College the latest in all research and having all students very upbeat and have a thirst or hunger for knowledge, be eager to learn all the skills. To make it a world-class institution where people are mutually increasing, imparting knowledge to each other and they are abreast with whatever latest happening in the world so that they can bring about changes in their treatment protocols.

Q: How the ongoing Covid-19 wave and earlier waves have affected the academic activities at Maulana Azad Medical College?

A: Covid has hugely impacted our institution in two-three different ways. In the first and second wave, our institute had become a Covid hospital, so all our speciality students were actively involved in the Covid care patients and their own subject training suffered in the process, especially in the specialities that were skill-based and the skill really took a back seat and also their examination of normal patients and management has really suffered because of Covid. For undergraduate students, physical teaching has taken a back seat, they are all having online classes.

Physical contact has its own advantages because there is a lot of interactiveness in the classes and our speciality is not something which you can learn on the computer and digital, you have to feel the patient and you have to talk to the patient, history taking is also an art. Examining a patient is an art and till you do it, you can’t learn it and every day we keep improving upon ourselves. Because of Covid and social distancing, the students really lagged behind in going to clinics. But we have somehow tried to overcome that we tried to arrange classes for them so that skill deficiency is less but yes it is still not the same as it was used to be.

Q: The Centre has approved 27% OBC and 10% EWS reservations under All India Quota (AIQ) from the academic session 2021-22, how it will impact the seat matrix? Also, are you going to add more seats to accommodate the new quota under AIQ.

A: I don’t have the authority to increase or decrease the seats, these all decided by the Faculty of Medical Sciences in collaboration with the Central government and we have to go as per the rules whatever it is and whatever the Central committee decides about the number of seats, we are bound by that.

Q: NEET-UG and NEET-PG 2021 got unprecedently delayed at this pandemic time when the country needs more doctors, what would you like to say about this delay?

A: Everything was under sub judice, so I can’t say much about that, though, of course, we would have liked the students to have joined at their normal time especially the postgraduate students, for almost a year we had students of only two batches instead of students of three batches, so the students were really overworked and also the same students also lacked in skills because of this Covid and this was an added burden, we would have liked NEET PG Counselling 2021 to have started at the right time and new students to have joined at the right time and since it is a judicial decision, I can not say much about it. 

The National Medical Commission (NMC) 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 think it's a very good approach that they come up with a national exit level exam, this is almost like doing your final professional and uniformity is there in every part of the country because right now, our students pay very little attention to the internship. At our time, we used to work and study during internships and we used to be focused on improving our skills for patient workups, nowadays students are more bothered about clearing pg entrance exams and getting pg admissions and where the syllabus is completely different from what we learn during the internship. So, there is much less emphasis on skill learning. I guess when NEXT will be held and it will apparently be held a year before the internship starts, it will add a lot to the skill learning. 

Q: Recently, very unfortunate news came from Maulana Azad Medical College that a first-year MBBS student committed suicide. Similar news came from Gujarat sometimes back, such incidents highlight the stressful life of medical students, what do you think can be done to reduce such unfortunate incidents?

A: She committed suicide because her name was held back for the professional, she didn’t score as per the required minimum eligibility criteria to be able to take the professional exam and we had taken the retest for two of those subjects so that her score could improve, she was not able to improve her score in one subject but in another one, she had improved.

After all, there is a minimum eligibility criterion for allowing the students to take up the professional exam. About stress I think it is again due to Covid as students have less interaction with one another, so they have fewer friends and fewer buddy systems, otherwise, they meet, they interact, they discuss. With online classes their interaction with other people is less, so that also affects their overall learning.

Read more:

• More doctors, nurses are need of the country, says AIIMS Bibinagar, Hyderabad, Executive Director

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