No clarity on exams of final year medical students, deployment on Covid duty

The Delhi government’s proposal to deploy final-year postgraduate medical and nursing students to manage intensive care units amid the rising number of Covid-19

The Delhi government’s proposal to deploy final-year postgraduate medical and nursing students to manage intensive care units amid the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the capital is likely to face hurdles as these students are due to take the final exams, which will end only by mid-July.

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As at least three postgraduate medical institutes and eight undergraduate and postgraduate nursing institutes in the capital are affiliated to the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIPU), vice-chancellor Dr Mahesh Verma has been tasked with deploying the required number of final-year postgraduate medical students and undergraduate nursing students to hospitals for a period of six months.

“We are looking for those who opted for specialities such as pulmonology, anaesthesiology and those who can man the ICUs. MS and MD students are currently appearing for their exams and we can deploy them only once the exams are over. As of now, we are only collecting data and exploring our options,” Verma said.

While students of medical colleges affiliated to GGSIPU will take their exams from June 25, those from Delhi University have no clarity on when their exams will begin -- the scheduled exams have been cancelled and no new dates announced so far. Generally, the final-year exams are held in April, which have been delayed this year due to the pandemic and the lockdown it entailed.

On Monday, the Delhi government also ordered that medical college students will make follow-up calls to Covid patients who are in home isolation for nine days. This comes a day after a meeting with home minister Amit Shah, wherein recommendations were made to engage third and fourth-year students to improve contact tracing and surveillance.

“There are around 600 final-year postgraduate students from the three medical colleges under DU. Currently, none of them is working in any of the hospitals. There is little clarity on when exams will be held. This is a huge loss of manpower, especially during a pandemic,” Dr Saurav Kumar Sinha, member of the Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association (FORDA) and a final-year postgraduate student of Maulana Azad Medical College, said.

Another final-year postgraduate student, Dr Sonali Malhotra, said they are stressed by the situation. “There is a lot of uncertainty and we don’t know if we should even be studying right now. We had prepared for exams while working in Covid-19 wards and then they were cancelled on the eve of the scheduled date,” a student of Lady Hardinge Medical College said.

FORDA president Dr Shivaji Dev Barman said the association had written to the Medical Council of India, the apex body overseeing medical education in the country, requesting that it consider an internal assessment for declaration of results.

“Students are disturbed by the repeated cancellation of exams and the stress of their Covid-19 duties. After the exams, they would go on to become specialists in their fields and this six-month (Covid deployment) period should be considered a part of their senior residency,” he said.

VK Paul, the chairman of the board of governors at MCI, said, “Final year exams are important as they will decide the medical specialists we have in the future. We have come up with extended dates and a set of guidelines to hold the exams in the present circumstances, with the use of simulations and case scenarios. Other options can be looked into if the situation demands, but exams are being conducted successfully by several universities.”