The Medical Council of India (MCI) is thinking of making it mandatory for medical teachers to undergo training in medical education technology as a requirement for promotion, Vice-Chancellor of NTR University of Health Sciences I.V. Rao has said.
This was part of the Vision-2015 of the MCI, which wanted every medical teacher to get trained in teaching methodology to teach students using modern techniques, Dr. Rao said while explaining the training programme after inaugurating the MCI’s Regional Centre for Medical Education Technology at Andhra Medical College’s Department of Physiology here on Thursday, and later while talking to The Hindu .
This is the second regional centre in the State after the one at Gandhi Medical College, Secunderabad, which has been functioning for a long time.
“Many medical college have applied for the regional centre but the MCI has chosen AMC because it meets all the criteria,” Dr. Rao said.
The centre at AMC was meant for 13 government and private medical college in coastal districts and efforts would be made to convince MCI to open a centre for medical colleges in the Rayalaseema area, he said.
The Vice-Chancellor said every new teacher must undergo training in teaching methods in medical education, which was not addressed to till date.
The teaching methods have changed and the future scenario would be all specialists would explain to the students about a disease and its treatment. “It would be an integrated method of teaching and problem-oriented teaching so that the student can have a better understanding of tackling a problem.”
The teachers trained here would teach their colleagues. The Vice-Chancellor hoped the training programme would be launched in full scale from the next academic year if the teachers were ready for training.
Coordinator of the Regional Centre at Gandhi Medical College K.V. Chalam said the teachers would be told to explain to their students how to deal and communicate with the patients, explaining them their disease and treatment methods, etc.
The use of modern methods of teaching like power-point presentation, computer stimulated lesson, mannequins, animation, skill labs, etc. would be explained. He said the doctors should become good teachers. Medical education was a neglected area as the stress was more on patient care, he added.
Superintendent of King George Hospital M. Madhusudhana Babu said training programmes similar to the present MCI programmes were being conducting here for the last many years. He requested the MCI to exempt senior professors from attending its training programmes since they had already undergone training.
He and Principal of AMC N. Kalpana Subrahmanyam thanked the successive principals, chairmen of AMC’s Medical Education Cell for continuously making efforts for the last many years for the establishment of the MCI regional centre in the college.
Present chairman of AMC MEC K.V.V. Vijaya Kumar spoke.
