New Delhi: In a major move, the National Medical Commission (NMC) has excluded non-medical faculty from the panel of experts who will form NMC assessors of various courses of medical colleges.
Confirmation to this effect was recently made by Dr Achal Gulati, President Medical Assessment and Rating Board (MARB) of the NMC to a letter written to various medical colleges asking them to nominate assessors.
In his letter, Dr Gulati pointed out to the need of the NMC to require a reliable and wide pool of assessors.
"We are reaching out to you for your support and participation in the process of updating the list of eligible Under Graduate (UG) / Post Graduate (PG) / Super Speciality (SS) assessors. This will help us to conduct the assessments within the stipulated timeframe," the letter stated.
The letter asked the medical colleges to nominate the faculty in their institution for this purpose, explicitly pointing out to exclude non-medical faculty. "I request you that as an esteemed ambassador of the profession and a conscious keeper of excellence in medical education, you nominate faculty in your institution at the earliest," Dr Gulati stated in his letter
"I am requesting you to fill the annexed "Declaration Form" with details of UG / PG / SS assessors in your institute.......You are requested to submit details of all Associate Professors (with 6 years of teaching experience), Additional Professors & Professors( please do not include non-medical faculty) and are interested in being NMC assessors," the letter added.
team had earlier reported that through the notification, issued on 28th October last year by NMC, the percentage of non-medical teachers in the three clinical specialties of anatomy, biochemistry, and physiology had been halved from 30 to 15% whereas the non-medical teachers had been completely eliminated from para clinical specialties of pharmacology and microbiology. For biochemistry, the hiring limit earlier was a whopping 50 percent but after the notification, it was brought down to 15 percent.
This reduction was challenged by various associations of non-medical teachers and the matter is currently pending before the Delhi HC
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