The NMC’s Draft Post Medical Education Regulation Guideline has clearly stated on Saturday that no PG diploma medical courses shall be permitted from the forthcoming academic sessions beginning medical colleges from September. With the guideline, the diploma course will be converted into three-year MD/MS course.
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The National Medical Commission (NMC), the country’s highest medical regulator, has decided to abolish the existing postgraduate (PG) diploma courses in different teaching hospitals across the state.
With the approval of the erstwhile Medical Council of India (MCI), medical colleges offer two-year PG diploma courses mainly in gynaecology and obstetrics (DGO), child health (DCH), family medicine (DFam), ophthalmology (DO), opthalodiploma, anaesthesiology (DA), ENT (DLO), radiodiagnosis (DMRD) and tuberculosis and chest disease (DTCD).
With the abolition of the MCI the Centre has formed the NMC. The NMC’s Draft Post Medical Education Regulation Guideline has clearly stated on Saturday that no PG diploma medical courses shall be permitted from the forthcoming academic sessions beginning medical colleges from September. With the guideline, the diploma course will be converted into three-year MD/MS course.
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“No new diploma courses shall be permitted from 2021 onwards. All the rules and regulations of erstwhile MCI regarding existing diploma courses shall be applicable till all the diploma courses are phased out and the last Diploma candidate has cleared the examination,” NMC stated in its draft guideline.
A senior medical teacher associated with a premier government teaching hospital in Kolkata said that the abolition of the PG diploma courses offered in medical colleges would streamline the post- MBBS medical education system. Students of two-year PG diploma courses study the same common syllabus under the same faculty and guidance.
With the conversion of the two-year PG diploma course into the three-year MD/MS course, all medical aspirants would be benefited a lot. Doctors completing PG diploma face difficulty in getting jobs while as compared with their counterparts who have done three-year degree courses like MD/MS. The salary structure of diploma pass-outs is also lower than that of doctors holding the three-year degree.
A senior official of the state medical education service (MES) said that many medical colleges in Bengal have gradually reduced the number of seats allotted for the two-year PG diploma course as most of the MBBS pass-outs
willing to study MD/MS.
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