Medical associations oppose evening classes

LAHORE – The medical community has termed the recent government plan to start evening classes in the federal government ‘myopic’, which will only benefit owners of private medical colleges, Pakistan Today has learnt.
The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) floated the idea in its recent meeting of the general council and the government decided to launch a pilot project to address the shortage of doctors in the country. However, the medical community, including different medical associations and professors condemned the move and vowed to resist it. They said the policy makers were being misguided by certain elements working for their vested interests.
The PMA demanded that this proposal should be shelved and steps should be taken to improve existing medical education in the country as per guidelines of the PMDC. PMA General Secretary Dr Ali Azhar said, “It disturbing to know that the idea of evening medical colleges, conceived by some influential office bearers of PMDC, was put forward to the president for his approval.
The president has been misguided by certain elements and the PMA and medical educationists are in a state of shock over it. Now there are 108 public and private medical colleges in the country and at least more than a dozen are in the pipeline. Every medical college is producing more than 100 doctors a year, which means that 15,000 doctors are being produced in the country every year.
Therefore, it is not the matter of shortage of doctors but the quality that is being produced. As far as the medical education in existing medical colleges is concerned, it is far behind the rules and regulations set by PMDC. Most importantly, teachers of basic medical sciences are not available to teach.
According to the PMDC’s regulations, a 500-bed hospital is required to be attached with the college as its teaching facility, which unfortunately is not the case with most of the medical colleges. PMA raised its voice against the establishment of evening medical colleges and reiterates that this is a very unworkable idea and will destroy the medical education in the country, will open the doors of corruption and will produce ill- trained medical graduates.”
He also questioned the teaching hours of the proposed programme. He said, “A full time medical college starts functioning at 08:00 am and finishes at 04:00 pm. This involves teaching, practical and clinical training and working in wards, OPDs and other small departments. All these places work in the morning and the teachers (part time) are available in the morning hours also. Evening classes will have to commence from 05:00 pm onwards until 01:00 am next morning. Who will teach these students in these odd hours?
What about OPD, other wards and clinical training? It all looks very awkward.” Medical Teachers Association General Secretary Dr M Amjad said that instead of finding the root cause of the problem, only ‘cosmetic measures’ were being taken to ‘waste people’s time.’
“The medical teachers association has not yet formally decided on the matter, however, I am personally against it, as it will only benefit a selected few who will earn billions from this move,” he said, adding that the public sector medical colleges were facing faculty shortage and this will worsen the situation.
YDA General Secretary Dr Salmaan Kazmi said it was an attempt by the private medical colleges to have evening shifts and double their profits. The private medical colleges were charging Rs 0.5 million per session from every student and if the move is implemented, it will benefit the private medical colleges, he said.
The government had initially deliberated the move but did not implement because of reservations by the medical community, he said adding that a majority of members on the PMDC’s council were from the private sector and they wanted to start the plan.