THE Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, the Higher Education Commission and relevant authorities need to resolve an anomaly. The matter relates to preference being given in jobs to those who have done CPSP-led postgraduate programmes compared to other postgraduate programmes.

After completing their primary medical qualification, doctors opt for post-graduate studies. In medicine the premier postgraduate institute in Pakistan is the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Pakistan.

When there was a lack of other university-run post-graduate programmes in the country, the CPSP awarded membership and fellowship certificates and those that passed were allowed to practise as qualified physicians.

The FCPS/MCPS is not a degree awarded after writing a postgraduate thesis and its defence before a board of examiners. In recent years different medical universities began to offer postgraduate programmes in different specialities leading to a degree of Doctor of Medicine (MD) or Master of Surgery (MS) which have a requirement of preparing a thesis and defending it.

The issue is the hiring of doctors who have specialised in the CPSP-managed rather than university-managed PG programmes. Major hospitals hire only CPSP graduate doctors ignoring MD/MS doctors who have to be content serving in secondary or primary hospitals which hire them at low salaries which is shameful.

Even the PMDC has given equivalence of FCPS with MD/MS programmes as both are 4-year programmes. I request PMDC and HEC, and the the higher authorities to look into and resolve the matter.

Dr Shabbir Hussain

Karachi

Published in Dawn, December 12th, 2018