After nearly a year, Centre approves 70 DNB seats in 6 BMC peripheral hospitals

But getting accreditation was an uphill task. The National Board of Examinations (NBE) is responsible for accreditation. “Its officials visited the hospitals and made suggestions, which we carried out following which fresh inspections were done. Only after they were satisfied, accreditation was granted, which was a time-consuming affair,” an official said.

The BMC has 16 peripheral hospitals, which cater to nearly 70 per cent of Mumbai’s patients visiting hospitals run by the civic body. But almost 40 per cent cases are referred to major civic-run hospitals such as King Edward Memorial, Dr RN Cooper, BYL Nair and Sion Hospital due to unavailability of specialists.

“The students will also treat patients as part of their specialisation course like in any other medical college. So, this course is expected to reduce the number of critical patients referred from a peripheral hospital to a tertiary-care centre for treatment and thereby help patients receive life-saving treatment in time,” said Dr Vidya Thakur, superintendent of the 16 BMC peripheral hospitals.

Last year, nearly 150 specialists in medicine, surgery, gynaecology, paediatric, orthopaedic, anesthesia, radiology and ENT, among others, were appointed with 8-6 years of experience to teach DNB to postgraduate medical students at these hospitals. Senior and junior consultants will be paid Rs 2 lakh and Rs 1.50 lakh per month respectively. One of the criteria for hiring doctors was their proximity to respective hospitals so that in case of medical emergencies, they can be called immediately to attend to patients.

“After their appointments, we applied to NBE for approval of seats for the DNB course. Now, as we have got recognition, the course would be initiated as per the selection process of NBE through PG-NEET,” she added.

Any MBBS student after their one-year medical bond can apply for the course. However, these diploma courses won’t immediately help fill the huge gap of specialists. “For instance, in the first year of the course, I will have two DNB doctors specialising in paediatric to treat patients at these peripheral hospitals. Then next year, I will have two more and gradually, every year, the number of specialists will increase with each new batch,” she said.