NEW DELHI: Safdarjung and Vardhman Mahavir Medical College (VMMC) will soon start the Department of Emergency Medicine on its campus to produce specialist doctors in this branch of medicine, officials said. The medical college will soon start an MD course which is a 3-year Post Graduate (PG) degree obtained after completing MBBS with a mandatory 1-year internship.
“Nine faculty posts have been sanctioned to start the PG programme in emergency medicine. The MD course will be started soon,” an official informed this newspaper.
“To improve medical care, emphasis is being laid on upgrading big hospitals and starting a separate department of emergency medicine in the medical colleges affiliated with it. The National Medical Commission (NMC) has stated that an emergency medicine department is a necessity and should be opened in medical colleges due to the burgeoning load of patients who require immediate care at health facilities,” he added.
Once opened, Safdarjung will be the third Centre-run institute in Delhi to have a dedicated department for emergency medicine. This department was first created at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here in 2011. Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Medical Sciences and its associated Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital (RML) also have a separate department for emergency medicine.
Official estimates suggest that around 15 per cent of patients coming to government hospitals require emergency care. “Most of the junior resident doctors handle the responsibility of treatment in an emergency,” it stated.