If hospitals are looking to commence postgraduate (PG) medical courses, then they need to have at least 200 beds, 75% of which, need to be occupied throughout the year by those patients who need inpatient care. This was stated in the draft minimum standard of requirements for such facilities which was put out by the National Medical Commission (NMC), as stated in a report by PTI.
It also stated that at least 15% of the beds in departments involved in imparting PG training should be either Intensive Care Unit (ICU) or High Dependency Unit (HDU) beds exclusive to that department alone.
It may be noted that NMC is seeking comments from the public regarding these guidelines for 2023. The deadline for sharing the same is September 15, according to the guidelines.
Biochemistry, Pathology, Microbiology and Radio Diagnosis — these are the four functional departments that the hospital needs to mandatorily have.
With the increase in beds, a proportionate increase in faculty, infrastructure, in-house equipment, and other staff members in subjects of Radio Diagnosis, Anaesthesia, Pathology, Microbiology, and Biochemistry should be made, the guidelines point out.
As per the draft guidelines, the average out-patient attendance daily should not be less than 50 in the following departments:
General Surgery
Paediatrics
Orthopaedics
Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Respiratory Medicine
Ophthalmology
Dermatology
Venereology and Leprosy
Psychiatry
Emergency Medicine
Family Medicine
Average daily out-patient attendance in other clinical broad specialities and super specialities should be at least 25.
Those PG students who are pursuing surgical courses should get two full days of operation theatre (OT) training from the second year onwards. Every unit needs to perform a minimum of three major and six minor surgeries on the operation day of the unit. There also needs to be one teaching room for each teaching department for clinical case discussions or demonstrations.
The institution shall have adequate in-house laboratory and imaging facilities and digital data of records of investigations done in various departments or laboratories, stated the guidelines.
