India has fallen behind in clinical surgery research despite having a population of 1.3 billion people, said Pala Babu Rajesh, vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
Delivering the Prof. S.M. Chandramohan Oration virtually on the topic “Training and Practice in Surgical Profession — The United Kingdom Perspective” on Sunday, he said the number of research papers getting published in peer-reviewed journals from India was far lower than from countries like Japan.
He said this was despite doctors in India possessing vast clinical experience. Stating that one often heard about doctors in India completing thousands of surgeries, Dr. Rajesh said these learnings were, however, not getting documented.
He opined that technological advancements were likely to drive changes in the curriculum for the training of surgeons. He said the younger generation of doctors could straight away start by performing laparoscopic and other minimally-invasive surgeries without having to first perform many open surgeries. Dr. Rajesh elaborated on the postgraduate training curriculum for surgeons in the U.K. that may span up to eight years.
Standardising training
Abhay Dalvi, president, The Association of Surgeons of India (ASI), said discussions were happening in India to standardise the postgraduate training programme and the inadequacies in having the programme in its present three-year structure.
M. Kanagavel, chairman, Chennai City Chapter of ASI, coordinated the oration and highlighted that a number of research papers that Dr. Chandramohan worked and helped with before his demise in July 2020 have been published since. All the speakers paid their tributes to the late surgeon.
