Dental colleges to discuss better teaching methods

[drsushant]

 In my opinion, these modern teaching methods should have been implemented long back. Teaching methodologies in a dental college or for that matter even a medical college arepretty boring. But better late than never.

        

[Drsumitra]

he debate in India about how many dental colleges are necessary for the country is escalating. In a letter to the state government of Maharashtra, the President of the Dental Council of India, Dr Dibyendu Mazumder, has now asked the chief minister of the state to retract permission for a new dental college to be established at the Maharashtra University of Health Science.
Mazumder said that with increasing output of graduates from dental schools, there will be fewer and fewer patients to provide sufficient employment for dentists. In Maharashtra, which currently has over 35 educational institutes for dentistry, he said that the dentist to patient ratio has fallen lately to under 1:5,000, a number lower than recommended by the World Health Organization. The state recently increased the number of positions available in its three state-run dental colleges with the goal to provide attract more students.
With this trend continuing, Mazumder said that more and more dentists throughout the country are at risk of becoming jobless and pursuing other professions that offer more security and a better income, for example, in the business process outsourcing or insurance sector.
The problem of having too many dentists is not only limited to India’s third largest state. Last week, the government of New Delhi, for example, announced plans to expand the Maulana Azad Institute of Dental Sciences into a full university. Back in February, the Kerala chapter of the Indian Dental Association also ran a campaign against the opening of new colleges in their state, which already has 20 dental institutions and a ratio even lower than that in Maharashtra.
Nationwide, dental colleges have mushroomed over the last few years, now adding 30,000 new dentists to an already massive dental workforce of 1.3 million, according to the Dental Council of India.
The organisation has sought to halt the trend by introducing regulations to make it more difficult, particularly for private entities, to open new colleges. For the next academic year, therefore, new institutes will only receive permission if associated with a nearby medical college, the organisation said. From 2015, all dental colleges will also have to be certified by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council in Bangalore, a governmental body for quality assurance in higher education.
However, experts say that the step may already be too late and that there is time for a revised national strategy on dental education.

 

        

[Drsumitra]

The state government has tightened norms for setting up private dental colleges and has rejected the applications submitted by about 55 institutions for 2013-14, as they have no plans to set up attached hospitals.

Essentiality certificate has been issued to only one dental college promoted by the Malla Reddy group so far, which has its own medical college and a hospital.

The 55-plus college managements that had submitted applications now allege foul play over the change in norms at this stage. They said that as per the norms prescribed by the Dental Council of

India (DCI), a dental college can be allowed only if it is attached to a medical college situated within a 10-km radius.

Medical education department officials say that as per the latest DCI norms, an attached hospital is a must for approving a dental college.

The move is intended to check sub-standard dental colleges and ill-equipped hospitals mushrooming across the country. Most private dental and nursing colleges in the state do not have their own hospitals, but are attached to government hospitals.
The managements argue they had already spent about Rs 10 crore each to purchase land, construct college buildings, provide infrastructure and hire teachers.

They said that denying approvals to them at this state was unfair.

The managements have submitted representations to minister for medical education Kondru Murali and principal secretary Ratna Kishore. Officials say that a medical college’s attachment to a hospital is necessary to enable students to attend surgery and medicine classes.

 

        

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