Safety of doctors to be mandatory criterion for accreditation of medical colleges | Mint

New Delhi: Medical colleges in India will now be granted recognition only if they follow new safety regulations set by the medical education regulator, an official aware of the matter said on condition of anonymity.

This incident takes place against the backdrop of a nationwide agitation against the brutal rape and murder of a young woman doctor in Kolkata, which shows no signs of abating.

To get recognised by the National Medical Commission (NMC), medical colleges will be required to incorporate security features such as CCTV cameras, trained security and female guards on the premises, emergency control rooms and emergency alarm bells, among other security measures.

These measures were initially advisory in nature. “Right now, only advisories are being issued to medical colleges, but most colleges do not take it seriously and do not follow it,” the official said. He added that the new rules will soon be notified in a gazette notification.

“Once these parameters become part of the regulation, NMC accessors will be able to assess them during inspection,” the official said.

The important thing is that the new rules will be applicable to government and private hospitals as well as new and existing colleges, the official said.

Queries sent to the Union health ministry, under whose aegis the NMC functions, remained unanswered till press time.

background

The move comes after the Health Ministry on September 4 directed all central government hospitals and medical colleges to enhance safety measures to ensure a safe environment for healthcare professionals.

In the wake of the Kolkata case, the Supreme Court had on August 20 directed secretaries and directors general of police of all states and Union Territories to enforce certain basic minimum requirements in medical colleges to address the concerns of doctors regarding their safety at workplace.

The Supreme Court had constituted a National Task Force (NTF) to submit an interim action report within three weeks of the order and a final report within three months.

Last week, Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan and Health Secretary Apurva Chandra co-chaired a meeting with Chief Secretaries and Directors General of Police (DGPs) of states on immediate steps taken to protect doctors and healthcare professionals in medical institutions and sought action taken reports from the State/UT governments before September 10.

A study conducted by the IMA last month revealed that about 35% of doctors, mostly women, feel unsafe during night shifts in hospitals. About 3,885 medical professionals participated in the study. The findings of the study have been accepted for publication in the October 2024 issue of the IMA’s Kerala Medical Journal.

“The need of the hour is to regulate medical colleges, as the NMC is trying to do,” said Dr Sharad Agarwal, immediate past president of the IMA. “We have urged the NMC to lay down a huge compliance list of adequate safety and security measures for medical students and doctors while granting permission to set up a new medical college and its attached hospital.”

Aggarwal said the measures suggested by the IMA included regulation of duty hours, separate duty rooms attached to toilets, checking of entire corridors, policing of premises, deployment of adequate security personnel especially in emergency and critical care areas, more women guards and CCTV camera surveillance with recording on cloud, “because most of the time we found that CCTV cameras were not working and even if these were working, there was no provision to record the past footage”.