A recent national media report stated that non-clinical seats (related to fields like Anatomy, Pathology, Physiology, Pharma, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Forensic Medicine and Community Medicine) are lying vacant in several colleges in India. Some colleges have started offering these seats for free and yet there are no takers, TOI reported.
The report has come as a surprise. Experts have weighed in with their solutions. As per Dr Deepak Krishnamurthy, the best solution is to club the pre-clinical and para-clinical degrees with a diploma course in family medicine or a General Physician course. "Those who pursue them, after the completion of the course, can do teaching for half a day and clinical practice for the other half," he added. This will help provide the clinical workforce to deal with basic primary health care and address the shortage of clinical staff. "These people can either work for the same medical college in clinical depts or have their own practice," he added.
Non-clinical streams have a lot of market, another expert wrote. "Who is brainwashing the students to take only a few overhyped clinical fields? There is immense growth and career trajectory in all the non-clinical fields which are going vacant," wrote Jagdish Chaturvedi, an ENT surgeon.
