Addressing Faculty Shortage in Medical Colleges

There has been an increase in the number of medical seats by 2750. These new doctors will join the workforce from 2024 onwards. Since most of the seats increased were in government colleges and hospitals the government has now claimed back the status as the largest trainer of doctors from the private sector in India after seven years.

Challenge of Addressing the Faculty Shortage

The increase in the number of seats must be accompanied by the requisite increase in the number of faculty. Doctors don t get trained by themselves, they need a well qualified and experienced faculty to teach and train them.

Estimates suggest that there is a need of about 3,000 faculties which includes 600 professors, 1,500 associate professors and 1,000 assistant professors.

How the Shortage is met?

• Dilution of minimum qualifications required.
• Raising the maximum age limit for hiring from 65 to 70 years.
• Reducing the work experience requirements substantially.

But these measures may result in an adversely impact on the quality of doctors being churned out.

Shortcut Methods

The necessity to meet the shortage of faculty may result in desperate measures like poaching existing faculty from government colleges and resorting to unethical practices like ghost faculty or inducing doctors to act as faculty in more than one medical college, which is forbidden by the Medical Council of India (MCI).