NEET-PG-Counselling: A larger public emergency issue due to Pandemic

        NEET PG Post-Graduation after MBBS is an entrance qualification exam, one of toughest and important exam not only for medical students but for medical colleges and hospitals. As this exam will decide and form the back bone of the health care system in the whole country. Ultimately this exam will be the check gate to supply specialist doctors to medical colleges, hospitals and private health institutions in all the states.  Post graduate trainees form the bulk load of doctors performing the duties.  Needless to say these doctors form the back bone of the total health system across the country. For last two years, these junior doctors were at the forefront of the fighting the pandemic. 

       Since NEET PG was to be conducted in Jan 2021, but due to pandemic got postponed to Sept 2021 and result were declared few months back.

      NEET PG counselling is not only issue for doctors but an actually a larger public health issue and kind of emergency due to pandemic, which will decide the availability of doctors to public.

         Actually it is in patient’s interest to have early counselling.

         It is a sad situation, when the world is preparing to tackle the wave of pandemic due to Omicron Variant, other countries are ramping up their health care infrastructure and manpower, and Indian doctors are being dragged on roads by police instead of employing them in hospitals.

       Its importance assumes an emergency situation in face of looming pandemic. If the administrators had perceived it as merely a trivial doctors’ issue and remained complacent, it had been a grave mistake.

     What was the emergency to change and frame new rules when a pandemic of such a large proportion was going on?

    A delay in academic counselling means a wasted year for the NEET PG aspirants. It also means that 50000 doctors are missing from the medical system and  the health care force because of bureaucratic delays, at a time when health care staff is overworked and in desperate need of more hands.

      Point to ponder here is that is it the doctors who desperately need help? More precisely and in reality it is the patients and public who need doctors desperately. An early counselling is in public interest actually, the point administrators have failed to understand.

       But sadly, it is up to the wisdom of administrators that decides “what is emergency and what is not” rather than medical wisdom, a case of misplaced priorities.

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