Young docs discuss future of medical profession in country

PATNA: Incidents of suicide by young doctors, discrepancy in the number of seats between UG and PG courses, violence against doctors and the future of medical profession in the country were the main issues discussed by the Junior Doctors’ Network (JDN), the forum of young doctors of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) here on Sunday.

The two-day national conference of the IMA will begin here from Monday. The JDN parliament was inaugurated by IMA president Dr J A Jayalal, president-elect Dr Sahjanand Prasad Singh and others.

Dr Ajay Kumar, acting president of the Bihar branch of IMA, said about 500 young doctors from across the country attended the function and some of them raised various issues concerning the medical studies and profession. He said a workshop on basic emergency life-saving skill and advance cardiac life support by Dr Swati was organised.

Dr Karan Juneja, JDN national secretary from a Gurugram-based hospital, pleaded for equality in seats in MBBS and PG (MD, MS) courses in medical colleges. He said several MBBS passouts remain deprived of opportunity of pursuing PG studies due to the less number of seats.

Dr Rohan Krishnan, national president of Federation of All India Medical Association and senior resident (SR) of Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi raised the issue of discrepancy between DNB and PG courses like MD and MS.

Dr Shankul Dwivedi from Madhya Pradesh and joint secretary of JDN raised the issue of growing incidents of suicide committed by young doctors. He said examination-related stress, long working hours in hospitals, unhealthy living conditions provided by the institutions and competition with the seniors could be the reasons behind cases of suicide.