NEW DELHI: The government on Saturday announced new regulations to start a medical college, making it mandatory to set up a fully functional 300-bed multi-speciality hospital for at least two years at the time of application for establishing a new college.
The norm is part of the “Minimum Requirements for Annual MBBS Admissions Regulations, 2020” notified by the newly-established National Medical Commission. The new norm replaces the “Minimum Standard Requirements for Medical Colleges, 1999,” passed by the Medical Council of India.
The earlier regulations did not specify the period of functionality for hospitals for starting new medical colleges. As per the new norms, the beds required in various departments of the teaching hospital have also been rationalized to align with the annual student intake, teaching time to be spent in clinical specialties and the minimum clinical material required for undergraduate medical training.
The new rules are applicable to all proposed medical colleges and to the established medical colleges proposing to increase their annual MBBS intake from the academic year 2021-22. During the transitory period, the already existing medical colleges will be governed by the relevant regulations prior to the current notification. “The new standards have been defined keeping the functional requirements of the institution,” the union health ministry said.
“These allow optimization and flexibility in utilizing available resources and harnessing modern educational technology tools to facilitate the moving towards quality education even when resources are relatively scarce,” the ministry said. As for the teaching faculty, over and above the minimum prescribed faculty, a provision for “visiting faculty” has been made to enhance quality of training. Two new teaching departments — departments of emergency medicine and physical medicine and rehabilitation — have now become mandatory in all medical college hospitals for the training of undergraduate medical students.