Teaching doctors associated with government medical colleges and other healthcare services institutes will now get promotions on the basis of their performance in their respective teaching hospitals.
Their visits to attend different academic seminars in the country and aboard will also be allowed if they are considered as good performers in public healthcare services.
The director of medical education (DME), Dr Debashis Bhattacharya, has recently formed a five-member committee headed by professor (Dr) Pradip Kumar Ghosh, special secretary in the state medical education services (MES), to define specific criteria to judge ‘performers’ among the teaching doctors.
There are around 2700 medical teachers in 13 government teaching hospitals and other hospitals like Beliaghata Infectious Disease (ID) Hospital, B C Roy Memorial Hospital for Children etc. that conduct only postgraduate MD/MS courses.
“An internal order relating to the formation of the fivemember committee has been issued. The committee will define the criteria to judge the performance of a medical teacher any government hospital,” said Dr Bhattacharya.
Sources in the MES at Swasthya Bhaban said that the move is to streamline a section of errant teaching doctors who are prone to do private practice or frequently visit cities in home or abroad in the name of attending seminars ignoring their duties in their hospitals where they are associated.
The committee will also explore the salary package of a non-clinical medical teachers in departments like anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, pathology etc who do not perform any surgery or attend outdoor patients department (OPD) clinics.
“For instance, what should be the criteria to judge the performance of two teaching doctors holding same rank of professor but in two different departments like anatomy (clinical) and cardiology or nephrology (nonclinical) respectively,” the sources said.
“The committee will also define the tools for the selection of a medical teacher to attend any special orientation programme organised by the central government or others. Several other important issues like how many days a teaching doctor has attended OPD clinics or classes for the undergraduate MBBS or post graduate (PG) MD/MS courses and number of surgeries performed by him or her in the hospital,” an official in the MES said requesting anonymity.
The state health department has already administered several ‘strong dose of medicines’ among teaching doctors to streamline their rampant habit of touring foreign countries to attend seminars.
Medical teachers will have to produce their past one year’s performance in their respective teaching hospitals before the officials at Swasthya Bhaban, health department’s headquarters at Salt Lake, to get clearance to attend seminars outside India.
For instance, a surgeon will have to show how many surgeries he or she has performed in the medical college in a year to the health department.
He/she will also have to inform the department how many classes in the graduate MBBS and post graduate MD/MS courses he/she has attended in the teaching hospital.
For non-surgeons doctors will have to submit detailed performance reports like number of classes and outdoor patients’ clinics in the hospitals they attended.