Do we need more Medical College?

[Pal]

Lumbini Medical College & Research Center, Palpa has come into the existence after Royal Medical College Kathmandu.

Many other would be Medical Colleges are in the queue to get the affiliation from the Universities and recognition from Nepal Medical Council & Ministry for Education.

It is not relevant to mention the organization who want to establish a Medical College but its worth raising the issue of standards of Medical Education in Nepal. It is well known that for a new Medical College initial 5 years are painful to the Management team and students as well.

But the question is where do we stand? Is it just a Nepali way to run after a man just because he got the success in a new venture and all of a sudden hundreds of Nepali would do the same kind of things for year until they realize that it was a wrong move years ago. Why don’t we think collaterally?

Why don’t people start establishing hospitals for superspecialities? There are numerous subspecialties where one would contribute a lot. We lack in many subspecialties which need to be focused on, certain specialty center like Sahid Ganga Lal Heart Center, Kidney Center, Infectious Disease Control Center Teku, Nepal Eye Hospital , Kanti Child Hospital, Maternity Hospital are doing their best in their respective fields.

But we must not forget the care of Trauma Victims, Emergency Care, Pre-hospital Care, safe delivery, care of HIV/AIDS, TB & chronic illness. Above all we still have the higher no. of maternal mortality & Infant Mortality rate which are the indicator of Health of a country. Why don’t people spent money on this issues rather than going for a Medical College? It would have been better to set a standard of a Medical College and monitoring its progress over the years by the concern authority.

Young generation doctors do not like to have more medical college as they believe its sufficient but I spoke to some of the legend in our profession and they say that its good to have the institute at least some part of the population do get standard care but this Medical College shouldn’t be focused to the Central areas like Kathmandu, Pokhara, they must be established in the different location in Nepal more appropriate would be to have a medical college in each developmental region.

But how do we justify the faculty members outside the Kathmandu. Faculty members are not adequate in newly established Medical Colleges outside the valley; most of them have faculty members from India who have already been retired. Many of the faculty members from Nepal have left the academic medicine since they left their Post Graduate study but it’s the irony that they hold the post because they are senior even though they don’t know how many things has been change in the Medicine since they stuck to the clinical practice without academic touch.

In the most of the developed countries physician has to do the CME (Continue Medical Education) courses either online or participating in the conducting areas. No such facility is present in Nepal.

Let’s say how many of us know the formulae of optional math or algebra from our SLC level, we can figure out the simple one but that complex one is still out of our mind. Medicine is more than that, every day new medical breakthrough happens around the world, pattern of prescribing medicine, treatment of a disease changes frequently.

Than how can we say that a physician who left the academic medicine long before would be the ideal person to run a department in a Medical College. They must update themselves to impart the knowledge of evidence based medicine to the young generation.

Anyway it is good to learn that hundreds of people do get the job and less money goes out of Nepal for MBBS study.

Therefore I just keep thinking:

Is it good to have more Medical Colleges?
What about faculty members? Bringing old Prof. who can’t recall what they ate last night
Do people get the health services adequately? As it is seen that local people do not like the Medical Colleges?
What will happen to the MBBS graduate as there is another doctor next door?
Is it good to produce outnumbered doctors than a country need?
Why don’t governtmet prepare for a plan to send the doctors to the remote areas by increasing its facilities?
List goes on ….…

I will just keep thinking on it…….

[medic]

I think its high time to make a minimum level of standard for all the medical College for the quality control. must go for quality,not for quantity.

[Vishal]

actually we don't need any med school....don't do medical BUSINESS

[flirt]

In my opinion we need high Qualified professional doctors than non-productive medical graduates. So The Quality of Medical college should be high.
For example lets say from one swim education dept some student are taught to swim and they learned nicely to swim. From other hundreds of department they just learned and don't know how to swim. And suddenly flood occured. The qualified swimmer can save lot of people from the flood, but can the non-productive learner? They just see how the qualified swimmer do that job. Gist, If you really wanna learn how to swim then jump in the river with good teacher.
So my answer is clear, we need more qualified Medical college with Qualified Teacher rather than just increasing the no. of non-productive medical colleges.

[demon_dissector]

i say YES. It's only the 12th medical school in Nepal anyway. And there is such a high demand for medical schools, with lots of people wanting to become doctors and having to go abroad. If Nepal can accomodate the demand then the capital stays in the country. As for the standard maintained, well, there should audits done annually and rank medical schools accordingly, have national guidelines. But then it is Nepal and bribery is never far off, so the ranking wouldn't be accurate. The medical schools shouldn't be a business venture but sadly it always is.

[amitnasa]

we need more med schools in nepal coz the number of patients per doctor is still more when compared to china and other countries.