NMC Draft Regulations for Non-Medical Faculty Appointments

The medical education regulator released the draft TEQ 2024 on January 17 and requested feedback from stakeholders within a week. The draft regulations, if implemented, will replace the existing regulations of 2022.

In its 2022 regulations, the National Medical Commission (NMC) initially permitted candidates with MSc and PhD degrees as assistant professors in anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry, while doing a PhD in medical subjects important for promotions to senior teaching positions.

The National Medical Commission (NMC), in its draft “Teachers Eligibility Qualifications (TEQ) in Medical Institutions Regulations” for 2024 has retained a two-year-old provision allowing non-medical graduates with MSc and PhD degrees to teach medical students anatomy, biochemistry, and physiology. The commission has, however, restricted the appointment to a “transitional period” – a specific time when sufficient faculties with medical qualifications in these specialties are unavailable.

“In a specialty (subject) if enough faculty having qualification of that specialty are not available, one with related qualification and training or experience is made eligible to become faculty of that specialty for limited period till adequate number of faculty with qualification of such specialty are available. This limited period is called transition period..,” NMC stated in its draft TEQ 2024.

Earlier in 2020, NMC limited the appointment of non-medical faculty in these three departments to 15%, stating that the new Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) curriculum emphasizes developing specific skills of medical students, including early clinical exposure starting from the first year of MBBS, and mandates individuals with medical qualifications to lead these integrated teaching sessions. The CBME curriculum separates four-and-a-half years of the MBBS course period into three phases. Anatomy, Physiology, and Biochemistry are taught to first-year MBBS students during the initial phase.