VIJAYAWADA: Doctors working in both government and private services have urged the Andhra Pradesh Medical Council to extend relaxation for continuing medical education (CME) credit hours for renewal of their registration till the end of 2021.
With an exception for doctors who are involved in teaching in medical colleges regularly as they do not require such CME credit hours, the rest of them are supposed to earn 30 credit hours in a span of five years in order to get their medical registration renewed by paying Rs 4,000 per head to the AP Medical Council. If the renewal of registration is to be done under Tatkal, Rs 2,000 per head should be paid additionally and in case doctors fail to get renewal of registration within the stipulated period of five years, they are supposed to pay a fine of Rs 100 per month per head.
As the medical registration and its periodical renewal with AP Medical Council is mandatory for doctors who completed medical UG, PG and super specialisation courses to practice medicine, every doctor has to follow the norm without fail.
The AP Medical Council has given relaxation for CMU credit hours for doctors for a few months in 2020 up to September 30, 2021, for renewal of medical registration keeping in mind the prevalence of both first and second waves of Coronavirus pandemic and its impact on conduct of medical conferences, workshops, seminars, webinars and a host of programmes to facilitate enrichment of medical knowledge through interaction with experts.
As the stipulated period of September 30 is over, the doctors have appealed to the AP Medical Council to extend the relaxation by three more months as they are unable to earn the requisite CMU credit hours. Their main contention is that as they have been preoccupied with Covid-19 duty including conduct of tests, vaccination and treatment to the infected patients and other works like fever survey and so on. With no regular conduct of medical conferences, they have failed to earn 30 credit hours.
AP Government Doctors’ Association general secretary Dr P. Shyam Sundar said, “We appeal to the AP Medical Council to consider our request to extend relaxation for CMU credit hours for renewal of medical registration up to the end of this year as all doctors are preoccupied with Covid duty and did not earn mandatory 30 credit hours.”
Indian Medical Association, AP, with nearly 19,000 doctors as its members, has also sought extension of relaxation for credit hours for some more time. The doctors say that the decision of AP Medical Council is expected to benefit nearly 45,000 doctors in AP.
