New Delhi: Medical students who went abroad to China for their MBBS cannot seem to catch a break between the disruption to their education caused by the Covid pandemic and the tightened rules for them in India.
The foreign medical graduates (FMGs) who had to complete their fourth and fifth years online owing to pandemic restrictions are currently feeling the impact of a rule issued last year by the National Medical Commission (NMC), the country’s medical education regulator, mandating them to complete a two-year internship after their MBBS, rather than the usual one year.
This extra year of internship, students say, has put them at a disadvantage, since by the time they finish, they will be junior to those who started their MBBS after them. Further, the students do not get a stipend, adding to their financial burden.
Some students have approached the Supreme Court against the rule and are awaiting a resolution. While the NMC has said that rule is necessary since such students missed out on clinical practice in their final years, the students call it a “waste of time”.
They argue that before the internship, they first have to clear the Foreign Medical Graduates Examination (FMGE), a screening test conducted by the National Board of Examination (NBE) for provisional medical registration. Preparing for this too takes most students about a year, and sometimes even longer.
The extra year of internship after this, they claim, is setting them back financially as well as career-wise.
Naveen Kumar, a 2015 batch FMG who studied in China, is currently interning at a hospital in Varanasi. He said it had taken him a year to get through the FMGE and now doing a two-year internship did not “make any sense” to him.
“Those who finish their MBBS from countries like China have to spend a year for the screening exam and now we have to spend two more years in the internship. Whatever one needs to learn can be learnt in one year as well,” he added.
According to Kumar, his batch was worst hit by the pandemic as well as the Indian government’s policies. The junior batches who enrolled in 2018 and 2019 were allowed to come back to China — which lifted a two-year visa ban for Indians last June — and therefore might not face such severe issues in their final year, he said.
Also read: 80,000 seats, 7 lakh takers — inside story of why thousands of aspiring Indian doctors fly abroad
‘Our lives are in jeopardy’
Kirti Rawat, a 2015-batch FMG now pursuing her internship in a Delhi hospital, said studying in China ended up consuming many more years of her life than she had anticipated.
It took her two years to clear her FMGE, and her internship will end only in 2024.
“I had never assumed that just the MBBS would take nearly 10 years,” Rawat said. “This is turning out to be extremely difficult for all of us and putting our lives in jeopardy.”
For students in the 2015 batch, who would have finished their final year in 2020, there is no doubt about the NMC order mandating two years of internship after clearing the FMGE.
However, those of the 2016 batch, who would have finished their final year in 2021, claim that the NMC has not clarified whether the rule applies to them.
Last December, while hearing a petition, the Supreme Court had asked the Centre and the NMC to come up with a solution to the issue, but the students say they still do not have clarity and are continuing with their internships.
In the ongoing hearing of the petition in the Supreme Court, the NMC on 25 January sought more time to reply on the matter. The court then gave the commission six weeks to furnish its reply.
Shalini Singh, a doctor from the 2016 batch, who is now interning at a hospital in Lucknow, said that she has a study loan to pay and the lack of a stipend has made it hard for her to sustain herself. She is currently dependent on her family for funds.
“Ideally after a year of internship, doctors are qualified to practice. Why are we unnecessarily being made to do two years? she asked. “During the pandemic, everyone was studying online, even the medical students in India were learning the practical aspects of medicine online. So why is this discrimination happening only to us?”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
Also read: Ticket out of despair: How agents fuel the boom in Indians wanting to study medicine abroad