When they think it’s all over and done, The Medical Council of India (MCI) came up with an additional one-month foundation course for all Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) graduates around the country.
This one-month foundation course is geared towards equipping upcoming medical practitioners the human aspect in their field of work. By all means, this includes communication skills, the act of empathy, time management, and work professionalism. These are all human aspects that tend to be forgotten by new doctors, especially with the complicated field of expertise.
The MCI has recognized the lack of skill set on these areas, which is why they wanted to come up with a foundation course for MBBS graduates.
Medical schooling has greatly focused on scientific approaches which at the cost of sacrificing the relative empathy that a doctor must-have for his patients. The foundation course includes professionalism and ethics modules. Ethics module tackles on different disability protocols, disability rights, and proper handling of patients with disability. While the professionalism module teaches altruism, empathy, accountability, compassion and other common human traits towards those who need help.
Ethics module included in the foundation course
One of the lacking substance on some doctors right now is the ability to empathize. A lot of doctors focus a lot on how to handle patient cases medically that they seem to turn the blind eye on how they are empathizing with the patient’s situation. The ethics module aims to teach doctors proper ethical standards in dealing with their patients. It aims to have a faster judgment on handing out right and wrong actions towards patients. This will help doctors handle pressure at work in a way that will let them maintain their composure at all times.
Minor Language courses will also be included to increase the rate of competency of India’s doctors. Effective communication will result in an accurate diagnosis and prognosis. It also prepares them for possible international careers if in case they pursue it in the future.
The foundation course gets better with other inclusions such as actual community exposures, interactions with community health care providers and detailed care delivery system procedures. As for the recreational part of this course, an allotted number of hours per week is allotted for extracurricular interactions and sports activities to also help the doctors to stay physically sound.
This initiative from MCI is a good example of maintaining a good work-life-fun balance to be more productive and efficient.
