Medical education - doctors’ bodies reject proposed modular system

By Our Staff Reporter

Faisalabad: Rejecting the modular system of medical teaching, the Medical Teachers’ Association (MTA), the Young Doctors’ Association (YDA) and the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) termed the system `pernicious’ for the medical profession, saying it would wreck medical education nationwide.

Speaking at a conference, participants said the University of Health Sciences (UHS) would face resistance from students and teachers if it tried to implement the system.

Accusing the UHS of deception, they said the varsity was twisting facts and lying when it said that it had no other option but to adopt the system as the curriculum.

“The UHS has been discriminating against qualified academics by giving teaching assignments to juniors, flouting international standards by not ensuring the provision of facilities to medical institutions and confounding students by its poor management of various subjects,” the speakers said.

They said the UHS wanted to handover teacher training and capacity building to those who did not have requisite experience. He said the varsity had been attempting to implement the system by bypassing academic councils of medical institutions. The speakers said the UHS wanted to further compromise medical education standards that had already been adversely affected by the exponential growth of private medical colleges.

They urged the UHS to implement all of the World Health Organisation’s 106 international standards of medical education in place of the system.

They also noted that proposals of raising student fees and increasing the number of subjects to be examined in formative MBBS years had left students encumbered and crestfallen.

MTA general secretary Khurram Sohail Raja said the system’s implementation would have disastrous consequences for the medical profession. He said that “a particular lobby in the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) working for the interests of the private sector has been striving to introduce the system as the sole option for medical education in the name of revamping the curriculum.”

Raja said the PMDC had been deceiving the associations. He said the system was not the only option. Raja said the present curriculum was accredited the world over. He said all that needed to be done was to overcome its shortcomings.

He said circumstances were not conducive to the introduction of the system, besides the move would jeopardise medical education standards nationwide.

Later, the moot unanimously adopted a resolution against the PMDC’s Bhurban declaration.