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Setting the stage for optimum medical education
Puri, 12-4-09: A national seminar on “Optimum medical education & ethics in clinical practice” has been organised by Vedanta University on 5 April at Bhubaneswar. It marked the launch of the multi-specialty hospital as part of the Vedanta University project near the Puri-Konark marine drive in Orissa. The seminar was quite contextual given the fact that of late there has been a lot of disillusionment in public mind about the quality of medical education, what with so many medical colleges mushrooming. At the same time, with growing public awareness, questions about clinical practices, doctors’ services and the expenses involved are also cropping up now and then. If medical education is to keep up with the ever-expanding frontiers of medical research and clinical technology, something appropriate surely needs to be done. Allied with this is the issue of quality, accessibility and affordability of medical education. These were the issues and concerns that the national seminar sought to address, bringing together some of the stalwarts and leading lights of medical education and profession.
Padma Bibhushan Prof. Dr. M V S Valiathan, world renowned Cardiac Surgeon and Professor of Cardiology presided over the seminar in which Padma Bhushan Prof. Dr. N K Ganguly, Advisor, Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare, Govt of India; Dr Vasantha Muthuswamy, Member, Central Ethics Committee on Human Research, UNESCO,UNAIDS & Founder Secretary, Forum for Ethics Review Committees in Asia-Pacific; Dr G D Ravindran, Professor of Medicine & Medical Ethics, St John’s National Academy of Health Sciences, Bangalore; Dr S K Sarin, Professor & Director, Gastroenterology, G B Pant Hospital, New Delhi; Dr Omkar Nath Mohanty, Vice Chancellor, Biju Pattnaik University of Technology, Orissa; Jean Mah, Principal & Healthcare Planner, Perkins+Wills Health Design Group were the main speakers. In keeping with the theme of the seminar, presentations were made on topics like Excellence in Medical Education, Ethics in Medical Research, Clinical Ethics and Interdisciplinary Study in Medicine. The interactive seminar was attended by more than a hundred distinguished doctors and educationists.
As expected, the quality of presentations was exceptional and the ideas generated were quite engaging, conforming to the ‘out-of-box solutions’ that Dr Valiathan mentioned in his keynote address. There was a general agreement on the urgent need to make medical education more qualitative, accessible and innovative as well as to make it affordable. Not only medical education needs to be in sync with contemporary and futuristic thinking and practices, the issues of health economy and biomedical or clinical practices also need to be in tune with the social context. The seminar was coordinated by Dr K P Misra, cardiologist of international repute and Dr Dipika Mohanty, the award winning former Director of the Institute of Immunohaematology, ICMR, Mumbai. Among other things, the seminar generated a lot of interest in Vedanta University’s upcoming world class multi-specialty hospital and the school of medical sciences that will be based on the core objectives of service, training and research.
