Making many changes in the syllabus of medical studies in the country, a new guideline has been issued. The National Medical Commission, the regulatory body of medical education, has made Maharshi Charak Shapath a part of the syllabus. In addition, medical students will have to do a 10-day yoga course. In addition, the National Exit Test has also been made mandatory for medical students and MBBS degree will be awarded only after clearing it.
Students joining the current batch of MBBS will take Maharishi Charak oath instead of Hippocratic oath. Information about making Maharishi Charak oath mandatory for medical students has come to the fore at a time when the government recently clarified in Parliament. Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Dr. Bharti Praveen Pawar, while answering a question in the Rajya Sabha, had said, “As per the information received from the National Medical Commission, there is no proposal at present to replace the Hippocratic Oath with the Charak Oath.”
According to the new guideline, a 10-day yoga foundation course has been suggested for medical students, which will start from June 12 every year and will end on June 21, the Yoga Day. However, in this the college will be able to decide how to get it done.
In the revised curriculum, now medical students will have to participate in community health training in the first year of the course. For this they will have to visit community health centers as well as adopt villages which do not have primary health centres. According to doctors, community medicine comes in the third year of studies in the current curriculum. The Forensic Medicine and Toxicology course starting from the second year has been integrated into the third year course.
Dr Rohan Krishnan, president of Federation of All India Medical Associations, says, “The courses have been shifted a bit. In the wake of the pandemic, the focus should have been on subjects like virology and microbiology, but nothing like this has happened in the revised curriculum.”