MBBS duration may be cut by 1 year
Medical Council of India considering a “competency-based” curriculum for undergraduate students.
By : teena thacker
Update: 2014-01-28 12:36 GMT
New Delhi: There’s good news for those wanting to study medicine. The duration of the MBBS course is expected to soon be shortened by a year. After following a “segmented curriculum” for years, the Medical Council of India (MCI) is considering a “competency-based” curriculum for undergraduate medical students. The proposed curriculum focuses on developing skilled doctors through early clinical exposure, which is expected to result in shortening the duration of the existing five-and-a-half-year MBBS course.
The MCI academic council, which has been working on the new module, is expected to meet next week to finalise the new curriculum and send it to the government for final approval. According to experts, the current undergraduate curriculum did not provide adequate skills at an initial level. The new proposal aims at adding clinical and analytical skills.
and enhancing the decision power of specialists in context of new complexities in specialities at a very initial level. This means that students will be allowed to choose a subject of choice and carry on with the subject in detail rather than focusing on every subject in detail. “We are of the view that once the students are given enough information on the human anatomy, they will be allowed to go ahead with the area of their choice in detail.
We feel that if a student at a very initial stage gets to know that he would want to be an ophthalmologist, then where is the need for him to know about liver replacement, etc. Without sacrificing the subjects, the new curriculum will give students freedom, making it more radical for them,” added another expert.