Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) may become the first medical university in the country to set up a placement cell for its students.
While direct campus placements through these cells are common in engineering and management students, medical universities have for the most part stayed away from it.
RGUHS Vice Chancellor S. Sachidanand said this cell, to be set up in a few months, will help pharmaceutical, nursing and allied health students in the RGUHS-affiliated colleges get placed in hospitals and industries.
“We realised there is a demand for RGUHS nurses in domestic and foreign companies as well as universities. Similarly, companies have been coming to pharmaceutical colleges to interview students. We thought we should centralise this placements and put in procedures to simplify the process... the university can also bargain for better salaries for them,” he told reporters on Thursday.
Students will pay a minimal fee for taking part in placements, and the revenue will be enough to run this cell. “It is difficult to do this for medical students (MBBS course) as they have their own priorities and often do a post-graduation immediately. But, if there is demand, we can extend placement services to them too,” said the Vice-Chancellor.
Meanwhile, the university will be launching skill development programmes and upgrading their curriculum to meet the expectations of the industry. This will be launched in the final year of nursing and allied health science courses.
Dr. Sachidanand announced a student-exchange programmes with universities abroad as well as the introduction of new undergraduate courses in Audiology, Speech and Language Pathology, Emergency Medicine Technician, and Occupational Therapy.
