COIMBATORE: In a self-regulatory exercise, the Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University has framed guidelines prohibiting doctors from overstating their professional qualification or using misleading nomenclature.
An expert committee, headed by Vice-Chancellor of the university Dr Mayil Vahanan Natarajan, has come up with new mandates on how to, and who can, use the prefix ‘Dr’ and nomenclatures such as Doctor of Medicine (MD).
As per this, doctors who have obtained an MD (Physician) degree qualification from medical colleges or universities in Russia, China and East European countries cannot suffix the nomenclature MD to their names.
“The Tamil Nadu Medical Council should register these degrees as MBBS (Russia) or MBBS (China) here. These candidates should be instructed to display their degrees as MBBS (Russia) and not MD (Russia)/ MD (Physician), which is misleading the public. The MD Russia is a six-year programme with one year of learning Russian Language and cannot be an equivalent to the MD degree offered in India,” Natarajan said.
Explaining the rationale behind the decision, the Vice-Chancellor told Express on Sunday, “We do not know the standards of medical education offered in these universities abroad. Although these doctors are allowed to practice here after clearing a test, the public cannot be misled on their qualification.
“The registering authority (Medical Council) has the right to insist that they should mention their degree as MBBS (Russia),” he said.
Through another guideline, the university has also insisted that medical college students should not use the degree, which is yet to be obtained, as suffix with a bar or a small line over the degree. The nomenclature MBBS or MD can be used as suffix only by those who have successfully graduated out of a medical college, it says.
Bringing alive another debate that has been lingering for the past couple of years, the expert committee has also mandated that physiotherapists should not prefix ‘Dr’ to their names.
