Docs For Districts
THE announcement of setting up a Medical Sciences National Academy at Bir Hospital and the
plan for providing specialised medical education and training is a welcome move that could
have multiple benefits to Nepal's health sector. In effect now, Bir Hospital, the
country's oldest public hospital turns into a medical academy plus a service provider. It
was announced by Minister for Health Dr. Upendra Devkota on Sunday that the hospital would
provide health service from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from the coming Democracy Day on Wednesday.
While this will surely benefit multitude of people who flock to this hospital because it
is much more affordable than private hhospitals and clinics, the decision to conduct
specialised medical education and training in order to produce specialists is bound to
facilitate many doctors wishing to further their knowledge and skills through an
on-the-job training. In absence of such post-graduate level courses many doctors with MBBS
degrees have had no option but to go abroad if they wanted to acquire specialised
knowledge. With the newly established academy, now they have the opportunity to be trained
at the academy for five years under the tutelage of senior doctors in order to become a
consultant doctor. What is significant in all this is the provision that in order to be
eligible for this five-year course the doctors will have to have worked in remote regions
at least for a year. Similarly, they would require, during the five-year course period, to
work in the district or regional hospitals.
Many half-hearted efforts have been made in the past to get
doctors to work in remote regions. But they have produced very little results and district
hospitals in general hardly see a sufficient number of doctors willing to work there. The
criterion on working in remote districts both prior to joining the course and receiving
certification for medical consultancy as well as during the course, can be expected to
address this problem of shortage of qualified doctors in districts outside the Kathmandu
Valley where all doctors in this country seem to congregate on. This also does away with
the past practice of acquiring the status of medical consultancy by practising medicine
independently for five years. The more hands-on transfer of knowledge and skills from
senior doctors to MBBS graduates during the course, planned to be conducted in conjunction
with various hospitals and specialists, could also mean Nepal will have more qualified
doctors who become really deserving of a consultancy certification. This could result in
an improvement of overall quality of medical service.
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