The National Medical Commission (NMC) has issued draft minimum standard of requirements for postgraduate courses 2023 (MSR-23). The draft regulations are available on the NMC website - nmc.org.in. Commission has invited comments on the draft MSR 2023 and comments on the draft regulations can be shared on the email id - comments.pgmsr@nmc.org.in in MS Word (.docx) format or machine-readable PDF format within 10 days from September 6. As per the Minimum Standard of Requirements for Post-Graduate Courses-2023 (MSR-23) draft guidelines, there shall be proportionate increase in the faculty, infrastructure and other staff in a subject of radio-diagnosis, anaesthesia, pathology, microbiology and biochemistry with the increase in the number of beds in the hospital. Also, the draft added, there shall be proportionate increase in the faculty and infrastructure, if workload in the department is more. All postgraduate medical college and institution will have facilities for teaching the basic science subjects as per guidelines, the NMC draft said. The draft guidelines also suggested that hospital will have minimum 200 beds and will compulsorily have functioning biochemistry, pathology, microbiology and radio diagnosis departments. 75 per cent of the hospital beds should be occupied throughout the year by patients requiring inpatient care, while a minimum 15 per cent of the total beds in the Department imparting post-graduate training should be Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds/High Dependency Unit (HDU) beds exclusively of that department. Among the conditions put in the draft guidelines, NMC also said that there should be a Departmental Library with essential books and journals as per curriculum requirements. Every teaching department shall have one teaching room with a capacity to accommodate an adequate number of students for clinical case discussions and demonstrations and each such room shall have audio-visual facilities. The institution shall have adequate in-house laboratory and imaging facilities for the training of post-graduate students, which should be fully run and governed by the respective department. The average daily out-patients attendance should not be less than 50 in general medicine, general surgery, paediatrics, orthopaedics, obstetrics and gynaecology, respiratory medicine, ophthalmology, dermatology, venereology and leprosy, psychiatry, emergency medicine, and family medicine. Average daily out-patients attendance in other clinical broad specialities and super specialities should be at least 25. Post graduate students pursuing surgical courses should get operation theatre training for at least two full days in a week while second year onwards, trainees will get training as first assistant/supervised performance for two full days in a week. Every faculty will preferably get two full days of operation table independently with or without supervision. Total biochemical investigations should be at least 15 per cent of the total daily OPD load of the hospital and total microbiological investigations should be at least five per cent of the total daily OPD load of the hospital, the draft guidelines stated.
