AIIMS-Patna to recruit 120 faculty members by January

The institute at present has only 54 teachers, and faces an acute crunch after more than 10 faculty members of the first lot, recruited before the commencement of MBBS curriculum in 2012, left it.

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna (AIIMS-P) will have 100-120 new faculty members by January, as the three-day sixth and final round of interview for recruitment of teachers begins in New Delhi on Friday.

The All India Institute of Medical Science, Patna. (HT file photo))

The fresh recruitments notwithstanding, the tertiary care healthcare institute will still be short of its sanctioned strength of 304 faculty members. The institute at present has only 54 teachers, and faces an acute crunch after more than 10 faculty members of the first lot, recruited before the commencement of MBBS curriculum in 2012, left it.

The institute has struggled to get quality teachers. Despite advertisement for 252 faculty and non-faculty positions in March 21, the institute has so far been able to shortlist only around 120.

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“We are not filling up in haste all faculty positions we advertised in March. We are going for need-based recruitment of quality people, even if it means having to wait a little longer. We are not going to lower the bar just to fill up existing vacancies. Faculty positions, where we do not get qualified and competent hands will remain open and will be taken up in the next round of recruitment,” AIIMS-Patna director Dr Prabhat Kumar Singh told Hindustan Times.

Departments like neurology, ophthalmology and psychiatry, which did not have any faculty, would benefit out of the ongoing recruitment drive. Others like cardiology and nephrology would still be vacant and their recruitment taken up at a later stage, added Dr Singh.

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The institute would also introduce a new department — transfusion medicine and blood bank — as it has advertised for a post each of professor, additional professor, associate professor and two posts of assistant professor. The blood bank, which awaits licence, has five senior residents from clinical pathology now.

Faculty recruitment at AIIMS-Patna has been mired in controversy since the very beginning. Its internal scrutiny committee had in September 2013 pointed out that eligibility credentials in terms of educational qualification, experience and age — of at least 16 faculty members were suspect. Its faculty recruitment advertisement was scrapped in 2016 before being advertised afresh in March.