While the Covid pandemic brought policy focus on health systems in general, the Ukraine war crisis brought the focus on the state of medical education in India.

Nearly 90,000 allopathy medical students graduate every year from ~595 medical colleges and additional 53,000 AYUSH medical students graduate from ~733 AYUSH colleges. As per the statement made in Lok Sabha by the Union Minister of State for Health & Family Welfare in July 2021, there are 12.68 registered allopathic and 5.65 lakh AYUSH doctors in India. In addition, students trained in foreign medical colleges are licensed to practice after clearing the foreign medical graduate exams (FMGE) conducted by the National Board of Exams (NBE). The number of students appearing for FMGE is increasing over years. Many state governments have made recent announcements of setting up new medical colleges in each district.

WHO recommends a minimum of 1 doctor per 1000 people. To meet this, India needs ~14 lakh doctors. WHO does not specify whether formally qualified AYUSH doctors practicing alternate systems of medicine are to be counted in the assessment. Given the above statistics, we seemingly are nearing the benchmark if we were to count only allopathic doctors. However, we do not have accurate data on yearly turnover due to retirement, migration, career change, and deaths to estimate the number of new graduates needed to replace the loss. In addition, the revolution we are witnessing in digital health, especially in the area of telemedicine, clinical decision support systems, self-care apps, and AI may change the equation further says Dr. Krishna Reddy Nallamalla President, InOrder, Regional Director, South Asia, ACCESS Health International

The problem is not in numbers. It is in the distribution of the doctors!

While we seem to be close to the desired numbers, they are not distributed as per the population needs in terms of geography and specialization. While two-thirds of the population still lives in villages, two-thirds of doctors are living in towns and cities leading to demand-supply mismatches. As people seek specialists for their needs, their number is not commensurate with the disease burden of the population. Mobile clinics, telemedicine, increased road connectivity, etc., are partly bridging the gap in villages. But telemedicine cannot substitute a real doctor talking and touching a patient! There is a need for systematic assessment of the demand-supply gap of specialists to plan seats in specialty courses.

There is a great concern about the quality

While medical colleges adhere to standards laid down by the national medical council on paper, the quality of students coming out in terms of their knowledge and skills is not uniform. Standards have been evolving in terms of simulation labs, teaching privileges to visit faculty, online classes, and teaching methods. Competency-based teaching curricula are being designed. However, there continue to be challenges in exposure to a range of clinical cases, diagnostic and therapeutic technologies. Flexibility in clinical rotations might address this.

Just as the common entrance exam – NEET, is designed to ensure common standards across the country, the proposed common exit exam called NEXT, may bring about uniformity in standards of exiting students across the country. However, some states have started objecting to NEET in the name of federalism and freedom of states. Given the fact that we do not have separate state-level licensing to practice medicine, it makes sense to have nation-level entrance and exit examinations. While the above ensures quality at exit level, how to maintain the competencies in the face of rapid advances in medical sciences. Unlike some of the developed countries, India doesn’t have a system of mandatory continuing medical education (CME) credits and re-licensing examination every 10 years to sustain the competencies.

Medical education is foundational for strong and resilient health systems.

Medical education shall prepare the student for the most complex and dynamic health systems. In addition to the traditional focus on medical sciences, a student of today needs to be conversant in health systems, health management, public health, health informatics, health economics, health policy, health regulation, healthcare purchasing, behavioral sciences, etc. Medical students should be groomed in the professionalism of the highest order in terms of medical ethics, compassion, patient-centeredness, equity, and human dignity.

In summary

The supply of medical professionals should be planned as per the emerging population healthcare needs, advances in medical and digital technologies, and aging populations. The curricula have to be designed to prepare the student for complex health systems and patient-centered integrated value-based care. Standards should be in line with evolving learning methods and tools. Quality should be assured through high standards in entrance and exit examinations, licensing, and relicensing methods. Planned National Health Professionals Register will enable planning in the supply side of medical graduates and postgraduates. In addition, the growing demand-supply gap across the world makes a strong case for health workforce labor economics.

About the author- Dr. Krishna Reddy Nallamalla, President, InOrder, Regional Director, South Asia, ACCESS Health International