New Delhi: A massive faculty shortage is plaguing the country’s All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), including the flagship institute in Delhi, with many senior doctors leaving for the private sector, government data shows.
India has 20 AIIMS institutions, apart from AIIMS Delhi, on which the others have been modelled, but at none of these facilities are even 80 percent of the sanctioned posts filled, according to an analysis of the government’s replies to Parliament questions. Faculty shortages range from 24 percent to as much as 73 percent.
“Healing and teaching as a profession have lost their charm and glory in a highly commercialised, profit-driven business world. Super specialty clinical practice in corporate hospitals is more attractive than academic teaching and research in medical colleges and AIIMS,” said Dr Antony K.R., a public health specialist.
The crisis is particularly severe at some of the newer AIIMS. The Union Ministry of Health and Welfare’s replies in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha reveal that at the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Madurai in Tamil Nadu, which became operational in 2022, only 49 posts, or less than 27 percent, of professors, additional professors, associate professors and assistant professors out of 183 sanctioned posts, are filled.
At AIIMS Rajkot in Gujarat, which became functional even before in 2020, the institute is making do with just 76 out of 183 sanctioned posts, or a little over 40 percent of faculty members.
But if third-generation AIIMS are struggling to attract faculty, the situation is hardly better at the second-generation institutes, and even AIIMS Delhi, considered the country’s top public facility for tertiary care health services and high-quality medical education.
At AIIMS Delhi, a whopping 462 faculty positions, or over 35 percent of 1,306 sanctioned posts, are lying vacant, the government’s responses to Parliament questions show.
The huge faculty crunch at AIIMS persists despite measures such as inviting retired teachers from medical colleges to join and allowing visiting faculty from within India and abroad to address the shortage.
The data also reveals huge vacancies across reserved categories, including Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Castes (OBC).
At AIIMS Delhi alone, total faculty and resident doctor vacancies, including senior residents, stand at 730, of which 250, 115 and 350 are for the SC, ST and OBC categories, respectively.
The government informed Parliament that it had taken steps to expedite the filling of vacant sanctioned faculty positions in various institutes, including constituting a standing selection committee in each AIIMS as per the AIIMS Act.
Additionally, the government has made provisions for hiring retired faculty on a contract basis at the new AIIMS. The appointments at the professor, additional professor and associate professor levels will be from Institutes of National Importance (INIs) and government medical colleges (GMCs), up to the age of 70 years.
It also said a visiting faculty scheme has been formulated to allow faculty members holding academic positions in government institutions within India or academic institutions outside India to teach at the new AIIMS.
Yet, the huge shortage in faculty positions suggests that the initiatives have not been effective enough.
Some public health and medical education experts said that the government’s push to set up AIIMS and new medical colleges with huge capital investment in infrastructure, but without realistic human resource planning for production, training and deployment of teaching faculty, was a flawed strategy.
Dr Antony said the lucrative pay packages offered by private sector hospitals continued to lure young medical specialists, both from the general and reserved categories.
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Big exodus of senior doctors
Over the last few years, the number of doctors leaving the AIIMS in many cities, including the one in the national capital, has also been striking. AIIMS Delhi has a footfall of over 15,000 patients a day, including nearly 500 in the emergency department alone.
A government reply in Parliament last August said that between 2021-2024 (till July), 422 doctors had quit 20 AIIMS institutes in various cities. They included 25 doctors from AIIMS Delhi, 27 from AIIMS Bhopal, 37 each from AIIMS Bhubaneshwar and AIIMS Raipur, and 27 from AIIMS Nagpur.
The big names who have quit AIIMS Delhi over the last couple of years include head and neck surgeon Dr S.V.S. Deo and neurologist Dr. M.V. Padma Srivastava.
“I am not sure about specific exits, but the reasons behind most of the exits are dissatisfaction with career growth within the institutions and a desire to experience functioning in a corporate hospital,” said a senior member of the Faculty Association of AIIMS, Delhi, who did not wish to be named.
But Dr Antony suggested that starting new AIIMS and medical colleges be halted until the existing posts are filled.
“The solutions, mainly for newer institutions, can be to stop starting new AIIMS and medical colleges till the teaching faculty strength is completed from the available pool in the country, offering competitive remuneration and career growth and restricting foreign assignments of enrolled staff taking long leave,” he said.
He also recommended a need-based admission policy for post-graduate seats in government institutions for meritorious undergraduates, with a service bond for 15-20 years and an assured posting in AIIMS or similar medical research institutes after specialisation.
“The candidate has at the outset an informed choice, a take-it-or-leave-it condition. The tragedy now is government toils in the field and cultivates, but the private sector harvests the crop of specialists and fills their barns,” said the public health specialist.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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Senior residents won’t join because the job is temporary (contract basis). Because of inadequate faculty, existing faculty are overburdened and hence quit. Of course, private sector pays more than AIIMSs.