Several Post-Graduation (PG) students working as resident doctors in various hospitals of Bangalore have one complaint that they are only on COVID duty and are not getting any significant clinical experience. Post-Graduation helps to shape the career of medical students and three years of PG gives maximum learning exposure to select further sub-speciality courses.

The resident doctors said that from the time the pandemic broke out eight months ago, they have not learnt any new or special skills. They may face difficulty to treat patients in future without any clinical experience.

The resident doctors had even submitted a letter to the dean and director of the Bangalore Medical College Research Institute (BMCRI) on the grievances of the PG students. They are still awaiting the dean’s response.

Dr Dayanand Sagar, former president of Karnataka Resident Doctors’ Association, who is doing his PG from BMCRI said that since the coronavirus pandemic hit, few hospitals like Bowring and Victoria were converted into COVID hospitals and had stopped treating non-COVID patients. This has stopped them from treating and gaining practical knowledge. If this continues for long, they won’t be having any competent doctors. On COVID duty, they don’t learn anything new as it is the same treatment protocol, where they give patients medicine and check their saturation levels.

Another grievance they had was related to fees. The students mentioned that in Maharashtra, the academic fees are waived during the COVID period, whereas in Karnataka, students were asked to pay the fees. Even though they are not learning anything academic they were asked to pay fees for this year. The government should think and start all non- COVID services to start their practice.

A second year PG student said that the surgical branches barely had any experience in the past 7 months. One final year student from Mysore Medical College said that the postgraduates of 2019-20 are not given any sub-speciality postings.

Source: The New Indian Express