NMC directs med schools to share the details of fellowship programmes

 
New Delhi: India’s top medical education regulator—the National Medical Commission (NMC)—has directed all hospitals and medical colleges to share information related to the fellowship programmes they offer to foreign nationals on their websites.
This comes in the backdrop of medical colleges and hospitals not sharing the information in a timely manner, violating NMC norms and resulting in delays in issuing temporary registrations to international students. The process also aims to prevent exploitation of foreign students by such colleges.
The medical education regulator has sought information such as the name of the course, content, duration, training facilities, teaching, faculty, infrastructure facilities and fee being charged foreign students.
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The Registration of Medical Practitioners and Licence to Practice Medicine Regulations, 2023 mandates every practicing doctors to be registered with the NMC.
As a part of the exercise, the regulator has to verify the details of the students before granting temporary registration to a foreign national to practice medicine in India.
Temporary registration of foreign medical practitioners is given for a maximum of 12 months followed by a cooling off period of one year and is limited to the medical colleges and hospital sponsoring the programme.
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“Despite the clear instructions, it has been observed that some of the registered institute have yet not uploaded the desired information on their website. This shortfall on the part of the sponsors results in undue correspondence and avoidable delay in issuance of TP to the applicants,” Dr. Vijaya Lakshmi Nag, Member, Ethics & Medical Registration (EMRB), NMC said in a communication to all the medical colleges and hospitals.
This is being done for online verification and timely grant of temporary Registration to Foreign Medical practitioners and to weed out middlemen who tend to exploit students.
“Failure to comply with the above may cause delay in processing the applications received for temporary registration for fellowship programs and may also be a reason for rejection of application also and onus of such rejection would squarely lie with the Sponsoring institute,” she added.
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