{"id":220177,"date":"2022-12-28T20:19:51","date_gmt":"2022-12-28T14:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=220177"},"modified":"2022-12-28T20:19:51","modified_gmt":"2022-12-28T14:49:51","slug":"many-docs-but-whats-the-prescription-breakneck-growth-in-the-quantity-of-doctors-is-coming-at-the-cost-of-their-quality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/many-docs-but-whats-the-prescription-breakneck-growth-in-the-quantity-of-doctors-is-coming-at-the-cost-of-their-quality\/","title":{"rendered":"Many Docs but What\u2019s The Prescription? \u2013 Breakneck growth in the quantity of doctors is coming at the cost of their quality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Source<\/strong>: The post is based on an article\u00a0\u201c<strong>So Many Docs but What\u2019s The Prescription? \u2013 Breakneck growth in the quantity of doctors is coming at the cost of their quality\u201d <\/strong>published in <strong>The Times of India<\/strong>\u00a0on\u00a0<strong>28<sup>th<\/sup> December 2022<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Syllabus: GS 2 \u2013 Governance<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Relevance: <\/strong>concerns with increasing medical colleges and doctors<\/p>\n<p><strong>News: <\/strong>India has increased its number of medical colleges and MBBS seats and it is closer to the target of one doctor per 1,000 population on aggregate.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>How have medical colleges transformed over years?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p><strong>Between 1980 and 2010:<\/strong> The private medical colleges increased rapidly between these years. This expansion was accompanied by <strong>corruption, substandard colleges<\/strong> that lacked the necessary infrastructure and faculty.<\/p>\n<p><strong>After 2011:<\/strong> A large number of new government colleges opened since 2011, especially in the <strong>southern and western states and Uttar Pradesh<\/strong>.\u00a0The government also decided a p<strong>olicy to convert district hospitals into medical colleges<\/strong> to ensure one for each district causing an increase in the number of colleges.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, from 2014, 270 new colleges came up but many <strong>government colleges started to resemble private ones<\/strong> in having inadequate faculty and poor standards of teaching\/ training.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>What is the recent decision taken by the government?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>The health minister has recently talked of a paradigm shift from an <strong>input-based to outcome-based approach.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The <strong>input-based system<\/strong> focuses on ensuring adequate infrastructure, faculty and patient load, all of which impact the quality of teaching and training whereas the <strong>outcome-based<\/strong> only focuses on increasing the number of MBBS graduates.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, this approach of government of increasing doctors and medical colleges have many concerns associated with it.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>What are the concerns with medical education and with the increasing number of colleges?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>The increase in the number of colleges comes at the price of <strong>poor-quality teaching and training<\/strong> and hence poorly equipped doctors as more MBBS seats do not mean greater accessibility.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong>fees even for government medical colleges<\/strong> have been increasing and seats being reserved for NRIs.<\/p>\n<p>Further, the current <strong>medical entrance exam<\/strong> favours those with access to expensive coaching, <strong>richer and more urban households<\/strong> having a better chance of becoming doctors.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, there has been an <strong>irregular distribution of doctors<\/strong> even when the number of doctors has risen from 0. 5 in 2000 to 0. 9 per thousand, closer to the WHO guidelines.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For example,<\/strong> north and northeast India are facing shortage while south and west India have the highest concentration. Therefore, there could be areas where the doctor-population ratio could be as less as one per 10,000.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, MBBS graduates treating people without proper training is injustice to the citizens as they are expected to take charge in primary health centres to get initial training.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, bringing in more doctors is not the solution without realising the consequences of poorly trained physicians and taking firm steps to improve the quality of teaching\/training along with proper distribution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: The post is based on an article\u00a0\u201cSo Many Docs but What\u2019s The Prescription? \u2013 Breakneck growth in the quantity of doctors is coming at the cost of their quality\u201d published in The Times of India\u00a0on\u00a028th December 2022. Syllabus: GS 2 \u2013 Governance Relevance: concerns with increasing medical colleges and doctors News: India has increased&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/many-docs-but-whats-the-prescription-breakneck-growth-in-the-quantity-of-doctors-is-coming-at-the-cost-of-their-quality\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Many Docs but What\u2019s The Prescription? \u2013 Breakneck growth in the quantity of doctors is coming at the cost of their quality<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10496],"class_list":["post-220177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-times-of-india","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":1700790203,"cached_date":1703849398},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}