Family Medicine PG
Family medicine (FM) is a clinical medical specialty which is devoted to the comprehensive health care for people of all ages and provides continuing and comprehensive health care for the individual and family across all ages, genders, disease, and parts of the body. FM has been developed as a counterculture in response to rapid fragmentation of medical care during post second world war period into specialty and subspecialty care in the much of the developed world. The concept evolved as a concept of medical care to cater to the growing demand of the people for personalized, continued, and comprehensive care.
Family medicine need 15 to 20,000 PG seats
India still needs more doctors in many rural areas and Northern States. It will usher us into the new era of medicine in India.
Currently India is facing severe shortage of Family Medicine post graduate specialty doctors. AAPI requests Board of Governors of MCI/NMC to make Family Medicine Department mandatory in all medical colleges, similar to the Emergency Medicine Department, which was made mandatory by MCI in all medical colleges by 2022. Due to the mandatory rule adopted by the MCI, Emergency Medicine departments have been established across all medical colleges.
Family Medicine MD was introduced by MCI in 2012 but only five medical colleges developed Family medicine Departments and postgraduate MD courses out of 542 medical colleges in India. They include Calicut University in Kerala, NRI Medical College in Andhra Pradesh, CMC Vellore in Tamil Nadu, St Johns Medical College in Bangalore and MGM Medical College in Maharashtra. By making MD program in Family Medicine widely available, this new generation of Family Medicine postgraduates can provide a comprehensive medical and surgical care to the communities in the rural, suburban and urban areas. All the members in a family can get benefitted from attending one Family Medicine post graduate doctor’s facility instead of going to 4 or 5 different specialists. This can only be fulfilled by making mandatory Family medicine department by National Medical Commission. This will make all the medical colleges have family medicine department and dedicated faculty to teach family medicine curriculum as per NMC Gazette requirements. Having a separate family medicine department will also promote medical students to pursue post-graduation courses in family medicine which will produce a diverse family medicine workforce that meets the health needs of the community.
Making mandatory Family medicine department will bring more post graduate seats, which is goal of NMC. Three years trained family medicine post graduates can produce high quality primary care physician and bring confidence in population and help improve health of India.