Are We Learning or Just Loitering? The Reality of Clinical Postings in Indian Medical Colleges? What’s your view?
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Great topic! In my time NEET was just starting, so we used to get into PG based upon marks in MBBS. So clinical rotations as med students were taken seriously they were the foundational steps for learning clinical medicine. Internship was also equally an opportunity to continue shaping your clinical skills. Then two house jobs of six months each and two years of PG = 3 years of MD/ MS.
Now I often understand that cracking NEETPG is the goal because without that you can’t get into MD/ MS. Would like to hear more practical understanding from others as to what they feel.
But becoming clinician is a process, it should be as something as PRE- NEET and Post NEET thingy.
I don’t see this problem in the US, because there med students have to pass USMLEs as part of the medical schooling. And after that residence is based upon the Application process what do we call NRMP (match).
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This is a very “thinkable” topic.
I don’t know about other colleges, but my college, which was in Tbilisi, Georgia, had this issue. Some doctors used to teach us so well and used to help us learn while we had our rotations, others were just asking us to walk behind them and used to communicate with the patient by themselves.
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From my experience, clinical postings sometimes felt like a lot of waiting and watching without much real learning—just standing around while busy doctors handled cases. Its just fear of attendance due to which students attend the postings. Also we r being asked just to take history, but when in internship we don’t know a bit - they point oyr what you did during postings. It was easy to feel like I was just loitering. But I realized that if I stayed curious, asked questions, and took small chances to examine patients or present cases, those moments turned into real learning. It wasn’t always perfect or well-organized, but pushing myself to be involved made the difference between wasting time and gaining useful skills. So yeah, it can feel frustrating, but it depends a lot on your attitude and effort.
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The ones who want to learn will learn. The ones who are here for a good time won’t. As simple as that. You can’t force anybody to learn and similarly, there are many professors not qualified to be doctors, let alone be teachers. Avoid them
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In the postings we r mostly expected to take histories n talk to patients . The art of history taking is the skill every doctor should have . I don’t consider postings as loitering bcz even if we aren’t allowed to do anything I observe n learn a lot of things . There r many things that one can observe in posting . A doctor should also be a good observer . So it depends on how you approach ur postings . If you want you can learn anything.