Pre and para medical NEET PG seats to become more clinically oriented

Team Bharat Education | Published on: Dec 24, 2022 Views: 239

Few streams have been unable to fill all the PG seats for the last few years due to limited growth opportunities

A fter five rounds of admission counsel ling, as many as 1,456 NEET PG seats have been lying vacant for the 2021 academic session. This was revealed by Bharati Pravin Pawar, minister of state for health in a writ ten response to a query in Lok Sabha on whether the seats had remained vacant after exhausting all permissible rounds of counselling. Lack of opportunities, in terms of jobs and financial stability in certain pre and para medical specialisa- tions, causes disinterest among students, leading to the vacant seats. The mini- stry of health is taking proactive steps to bring these seats under the ambit of 'clinical' so that post completion of the degree, students become job ready.

Certain courses that offer students a diploma also do not get too many takers

• Root cause

Clinical streams remain the favourite among NEET PG aspirants while certain pre and para medical streams like Pharmacology, Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, and Microbiology are not preferred, says Dr Abhinav Arun Sonkar, professor and head of surgery, King George's Medical University (KGMU), Lucknow.

"These streams offer the opportunity only to become a faculty member or get into research. Unfortunately, both of these have lost their charm today," he says. Exhaustion of available faculty posts across government and private medical colleges, along with limited financial growth in these profiles has affected students' outlook towards them, he adds.

Dr Sharath Rao, dean, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal, says, "Around five years ago, we had close to 130 seats, of which around 20 seats in certain specialisations remained vacant. Today, the overall number of seats has increased to 223, but the same number of seats in the same streams are still vacant. Thus, there is need to alter the demand and supply ratio bring about a change."

• Way forwad 

Dr B Srinivas, ADG (medical education), Ministry of Health, says that in addition to pre and para medical PG seats in Pathology, Anatomy, Forensic Medicine, Preventive and Social Medicine, among others, certain courses that offer students a diploma also do not get many takers. "Tomake the less fa- vourite PG seats more attractive, a clinical component needs to be attached to them so that they are no longer classified as pre or para medical seats but come under the ambit of clinical seats," says Dr Srinivas. The government and National Medical Commission (NMC) are taking proactive steps in this direction and hopefully a change will be seen in the next couple of years, he adds.