Issues related to the internship of foreign medical graduates in Kerala have again been raised against the backdrop of the dilemma of students who study in Chinese medical schools and are unable to attend offline classes due to the pandemic.
M.K. Raghavan, Kozhikode MP, in a letter to Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandavya and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, said facilities for clinical training and lab should be made available for such students. He claimed that many foreign medical graduates were worried about the delay in getting registration for their internship in Kerala. Quoting the National Medical Commission (NMC) orders, the MP pointed out that those who had completed medical studies abroad and done internship there, need not repeat it here. Mr. Raghavan claimed that only some states were not ready to go by the NMC orders and sought a unified law on the issue.
Those who have graduated from foreign medical universities are supposed to clear Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE) to register with the Travancore-Cochin Medical Councils (TCMC) in the state. They should then do a mandatory one-year internship with district or general hospitals later.
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The students claimed that the TCMC took at least three to four months to allot provisional registration number that was valid for a year. If there are no vacancies in district or general hospitals, they will have to wait for another four to five months to start the internship. They pointed out that the FMGE took place only once in six months and the results took another two months to be published. This means the students may have to spend around a year in waiting before starting their internship. It delayed their preparations for getting admissions to postgraduate courses, the students added.
However, TCMC sources have said that foreign medical graduates needed to mandatorily complete the internship before getting permanent registration here because they were not familiar with the Indian conditions. They need to learn and gain clinical experience and exposure about the epidemiological and clinical profile of the local community. Also, they need to learn and get exposed to the public health delivery and referral system here. “Our stand has been upheld by the Kerala High Court. The draft regulations of the NMC have also proposed two National Exit Tests for foreign medical graduates,” the sources added.