RGUHS moots 5-Year term for dental students

BANGALORE: Rajiv Gandhi University for Health Sciences (RGUHS) has recommended in a letter to the Central Ministry for Health and Social Welfare to implement a system of four-year academic course work and one-year internship for the Bachelors of Dental Sciences (BDS) students. The ministry had written to all medical universities earlier this month asking for their recommendations to the course structure for BDS, following Dental Council of India’s recommendation to change the structure. In 2007, the DCI had issued a notification stating that BDS should be conducted as a five-year academic course and to do away with the four-year academic study plus one-year internship. All varsities started to follow the system from the 2008 batch. Subsequently, students and teachers felt that the earlier system of internship was more useful. RGUHS registrar Dr D Prem Kumar explains: “The outgoing students told us that the internship had given them confidence to make a diagnosis and prescribe treatment as during the internship they are under the scrutiny of an experienced doctor.”Even as this debate was being held across various health universities, the Medical Council of India issued a notification stating that all medical courses should have one year of internship. “There is no way we could spend one more year of internship after five years of study. Medical students are already far behind their counterparts in completing their education,” says Avinash K, a 2008 batch BDS student.But RGUHS Dean of Dental Faculty Dr K S Nagesh clarifies: “As per the notification, the students have to complete their five year academic course. Even if any new notification comes through from the Health Ministry then it would be applicable only for students from the year the rule has been notified. This means all students from the batch of 2008 onwards have to complete a five-year course unless specified otherwise in any new notification.” Sources at the Dental Council of India say that preempting protest from students of batches 2008-2010, the DCI at a workshop conducted in RGUHS earlier this year, discussed the possibility of reverting even the existing batches to the earlier system and recommended few changes in the syllabus. “We have written to the ministry recommending deletion of a few repetitive topics and completing the academic course within four years. This can be done even for existing batches, provided a few extra classes are held,” says Dr Nagesh. The ministry has to issue a notification retrospectively or one that negates the previous notification for this to come to effect.