MCI regulates new curriculum for Medical students

The Medical Council of India have decided to introduce a new kind of training for undergraduate medical students,under which medical students will be able to experience the feeling of being a real doctor.As a part of this training, undergraduate medical students will be able to have ward visits, patient interaction as well as doing evening rounds from the second year of the MBBS course itself.

The students will be attached to resident doctors and would be able to accompany them during rounds of the hospital, helping managing patients and talking to them. This would help undergraduate medical students in improving their communication skills and also help patients in coping better with their illnesses.However, the undergraduate students will not be allowed to treat patients.

Member of MCI's governing body Dr. Sita Naik said that the current medical training is classroom oriented and boring and that the MCI is considering reviving a practice that had existed 20 years earlier wherein undergraduate students were assigned to wards.The students were then able to help resident doctors with managing patients but not prescribing treatments.The practice would give them early clinical exposure.

The meeting to finalize the new undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum for medical courses will be held on 29 March, 2011. The meeting will be chaired by union health secretary K. Chandramouli and will be attended by to academicians as well as vice chancellors.