GMERS Medical Colleges Undergo MCI Inspection

Ahmedabad: Weeks after superseding the Medical Council of India (MCI) till the National Medical Commission (NMC) comes into force, the MCI Board of Governors (MCI BoG) has initiated its inspection drive to check the infrastructure of the medical colleges in the country.

To ascertain if the medical institutes are having adequate facilities to impart medical education or not, an MCI team recently inspected four Gujarat-based medical colleges including two new colleges at Dharamsinh Desai University (DDU) in Nadiad and Sankalchand Patel University at Visnagar. The other medical colleges are Gujarat Medical Education and Research Society (GMERS) College at Vadnagar and the self-financed Dr MK Shah Medical College and Research Centre.

Certain sources confirmed to TOI, "The inspection at older colleges had got completed. The team was recently at GMERS Medical College at Himmatnagar."

The inspection of GMERS medical colleges has been a matter of concern for a few months. Medical Dialogues had earlier reported about the en-masse transfer of medical faculty ahead of the inspections. Around 252 faculty members including Professors, Assistant Professors and Associate Professors and Tutors, were transferred across government and GMERS medical colleges in Vadnagar, Himmatnagar and Junagadh that were due for a surprise inspection from the Medical Council of India.

Read Also: Gujarat: 72 Professors, Lecturers to be transferred to Medical Colleges for MCI inspection

A week later, concerned with the low number of medical seats in the state, the Gujarat Health Department issued a letter to the government and GMERS medical colleges directing them to keep track of medical faculties' duty and attendance regularly, to make sure no irregularity is reported during inspection time.

Read Also: Medical Education suffered due to Shortage, en-masse transfer of teachers for MCI inspection: CAG on Gujarat

The state government had taken various initiatives in order to fill up the vacancies but to no avail, the recruitment process drew a lot of controversies, leaving the state medical colleges high and dry.

The said was apparent by the recent hiring process which drew a lot of off-putting attention since despite receiving applications from over 600 doctors for 350 vacant positions at eight hospitals run by the society, the GMERS issued only 88 appointment letters.

Read Also: GMERS Gujarat: 600 Applications for 350 Medical Vacancies, But 88 Appointment Letters

There are around 3,950 seats in medical colleges across Gujarat at present; now with the aforementioned new medical colleges, the state's will witness a boost of 300 medical seats for Under-Graduate (UG) courses.

The annual inspections have an element of surprise as the final opinion bears implications about the college's affiliation and grade. However, the names of the members got revealed ahead of inspection, the sources claimed to TOI.