National Medical Council (NMC) will be implementing the new competency-based curriculum that includes a foundation course with Family Adoption Programme, Local Language Adaptation skills, and Yoga from the academic year 2021-22. Medical experts weigh in that it is a welcome move, but it must be implemented uniformly across the country without any political agenda. According to an NMC circular, the new competency-based medical education for the UG curriculum was discussed that focussed on Family Adoption Programme, Yoga, and Local Language Adapta tion skills.
Communication skills
"Local Language Adaptation is an essential part of medical practice. One cannot enter the medical field without being able to make an effort to communicate with patients. In the past, medical institutes in Chennai made efforts to train students from north India in Tamil and Telugu. These included under standing of key words, how to communicate, and being polite to patients. However, uniform implementation of Language Adaptation can be challenging in a diverse country like ours. At JIPMER, efforts are being made to train people in local languages, but it is voluntary. If it is made a part of the curriculum then some sincere efforts will be made," says Dr Rajesh Na chiappa, professor, JIPMER, Puducherry.
Equity of access
The new curriculum recommends Family Adoption Programme to begin from the first professional year and remain throughout the curriculum. The orientation to wards the same will be a part of the foundation course under the theme of 'Field visit to the community health centre,' which was allocated to the foundation course in GMER 2019. "Family adoption programme can make students learn through hands-on training. NMC has recommended a field visit to the community health centre for eight hours and it emphasises covering those villages under Family Adoption programme that are not covered under Primary Health Care (PHC) or any other government programme. If travel from college to the site is over two hours, then students will be able to reach the slum are as, and villages on the city's outskirts. This will help to reach patients who are not able to access primary health care," says Dr Vishal Marwah, principal, School of Medici ne, Amrita Vishwa Vidyape etham, Kochi.
Published on :- Times of India
Date :- 11/04/2022
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