Indian Medical Education needs a surgical systemic overhaul

The Indian Express story below urgently underscores the need for the Indian medical system to work hard to ensure that it's skillsets and qualifications are harmonised with the rest of the developed countries.

Otherwise, it will cause immense damage to Indian doctors as well as prospects for medical tourism in India.

Currently the US is a world leader in this area. India has a good chance to compete with the US if similar to the Indian IT global success story, Indian medical professionals can demonstrate that just like software engineers, their skills and experience in India are second to none in the world.

However, the medical education system (along with others systems) needs to be fixed for the same to happen on a permanent sustainable basis.

Otherwise stories like the one below will cause unforseen damage to the global reputation of Indian doctors practising in India. The ones who have cleared the foreign licentiate medical boards and are staying overseas have perhaps already proved their credibility.

For the global reputational capital of medical doctors in India to increase and for medical tourism to succeed as India's next big story and for the millions of India's poor patients, the system needs to be fixed permanently.

Pharmaecutical Companies and Globally respected doctors, medical professionals and other opinion leaders should take the lead in influencing government policies in this direction.

Whatever can be done for a vision for Low cost, High Volume, High Value Medical delivery systems in India (the most appropriate model for Indian conditions) as against alternative models usually prevalent in Developed economies, we should be willing to give it a shot.

A System consists of the 3 T's - Teams of People, Tools-Technologies and Tradition (Processes of doing things). (http://www.kaytek.co.in/erp/3t/ktek3t01.htm)

We need to look at the Medical Education System from a fresh perspectives in all the T's mentioned above and identify the most demanding changes required to bring our Indian medical educational system's global reputation, perception, recognition in line with the rest of the world.


http://www.indianexpress.com/story/18126.html

Interpol seeks Dr Death's academic records

Hiral DavePosted online: Friday, December 08, 2006 at 0000 hrs Print Email

RAJKOT, DECEMBER 7: The Interpol has sought information and academic records of Dr Jayant Patel, a doctor trained in India, who has been termed Dr Death in Australia, for causing deaths of at least 87 patients.
While a special inquiry committee has been set up by the Australian government against Patel's conduct, the Interpol wants to know whether the degree and other academic records he produced to practise in Australia were genuine. Patel, who hails from Jamnagar, obtained his MBBS degree from MP Shah Medical College, which is affiliated to the Saurashtra University.

A two-member CBI team from Gandhinagar today checked Patel's academic records and got the copies of necessary documents. "Interpol has asked to provide his degree certificate and related documents,'' said CBI Gujarat SP Rahul Sharma.

The CBI role, however, is limited to providing the documents even amid speculation that Patel could be hiding in Gujarat, where his mother and sister live.

Patel, according to Saurashtra University examination controller Dhiren Pandya, has been holding an MS degree which he received in 1976. Grandson of Keshav Patel, deputy CM of erstwhile Saurashtra state in the government of Uchchangrai Dhedar, Jayant never practised medicine in India. Soon after his training as general surgeon, he immigrated to the US where he received further surgical training at the University of Rochester School of Medicine as a surgical intern and resident of surgery. He began to raise alarm bells in 1984 at a Buffalo hospital where New York health officials cited Patel for failing to examine patients before surgery.
Patel then left for Queensland, Australia. Till February 2005, Patel was head of surgery department at Bundaberg Hospital, but reportedly fled the country after news of his misdoings surfaced.

Fourteen members of the Patel family are doctors. Declared absconding by Australia, Patel had reportedly last visited Jamnagar in 2003 to speak on hepatobiliary ( diseases of the liver and bile ducts) at a conference of the Indian Medical Association.

Patel has been linked with deaths due to complications and negligence during surgery like accidentally severing a patient's urethra and leaving a syringe inside a patient's stomach.

According to reports, the deaths by negligence came to light after Toni Hoffman, a senior nurse in Bundaberg hospital reported them to authorities. Queensland authority has accused him of lying about his past to get the job. Reports also said Patel tried to cover up the deaths due to botched surgery by issuing false death certificates and withholding bodies from being sent for autopsy. He would later arrange for the bodies to be prematurely released to undertakers to ensure they were not examined by pathologists