Medical education in India at crossroads: Issues and solutions

Abstract

India has not been able to achieve the target of "Health for All" so far. The burden of diseases in India still remains large. There is a wide gap between the requirements and availability of doctors especially in rural and outreach areas. Even the available doctors do not have the clinical competencies or mental make up to meet the healthcare requirements of the village population in India. Hence an overhauling of medical education has become inevitable at this point of time. Significant curricular changes reducing the theory component to the minimum and transaction of the curricular content through electronic learning mode with horizontal and vertical integration of pre-clinical, para clinical and clinical subjects assigning more time for clinical teaching will bring up a new generation of clinicians of first contact with the required clinical competencies and right attitude.

Keywords

• Curriculum
• clinical competency
• updating
• e-learning
• hospital information system
• Yencare
• Charaka Samhita