PESHAWAR: The unavailability of a proper induction policy for trainee medical officers has stressed out medics in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The Postgraduate Medical Institute (PGMI), Peshawar, inducts TMOs for 25 specialties twice a year, who are required to appear in the Fellow of College of Physician Surgeon (FCPS) Part-II examination after four-year training to become specialists.

There are 1,367 applicants for a total available 510 slots in different hospitals of the province.

Of them, 206 hold BDS degree and the rest MBBS one but the shortage of supervisors required under the criteria of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP) has diminished over the years due to which all applicants cannot be accommodated.

The PGMI can induct students on the basis of the availability of seats in the units accredited by the CPSP.

The TMOs had to resort to protest at the time of central induction twice a year in January and July to press the government for acceptance of their applications for postgraduate training but the PGMI is unable to entertain all the graduates owing to lack of supervisors and as well as recognized specialties.

Most training slots lie in the eight teaching hospitals of the province which don’t have enough seats and as a result, the protests by doctors have become a permanent feature.

Two days ago, four doctors, who were protesting their non-induction by the PGMI, were briefly detained by the police in Peshawar. This happens almost every year but there is no durable solution to the problem.

The Provincial Doctors Association has been asking the government to resolve the issues through creation of more seats in the district headquarters hospitals so the doctors could be accommodated and give an end to the protests taking place every year.

An association leader told Dawn that they had proposed to the government that according to the CPSP criteria regarding trainees for FCPS-II should be extended to the district headquarters hospitals, including Mansehra, Abbottabad, Haripur, Swabi, Nowshera, Mardan, Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan to create more seats.

He said the government recently stopped sending TMOs to Punjab hospitals for Part-II training which helped doctors complete their courses and we want the government to re-start the same so that doctors could be sent there.

Previously, around 200 doctors were sent to Punjab for training in different specialties.

We have also been asking the government to create more seats for super specialties in the provincial hospitals. For the last few years, many super specialties have also stopped induction of TMOs due to unavailability of supervisors.

We have been asking DHQ and teaching hospitals to inform us about the availability of seats in their units for training so we can depute trainees there, Dr Nasir Hassan, deputy chief executive officer at the PGMI, told Dawn.

He said the government had been requested to resolve the issue.

“We are inducting graduates of private medical colleges for Part II training in government hospitals. The private colleges should make arrangements for own graduates,” he said.

According to Dr Nasir, the foreign medical graduates have also been enrolled for training causing the situation.

“There is a lot of production of medical graduates, while the facilities for their postgraduate training aren’t enough to accommodate them all,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 5th, 2020