AIIMS to Offer PG Course in Family Medicine

The All India Institute Of Medical Science (AIIMS) will be offering a postgraduate course in family medicine across six of its campuses. The PG course in family medicine would include studying general medicine, basic surgery, gynaecology, paediatrics etc, reported news agency PTI.

The course will be offered at AIIMS Raipur, Rishikesh, Jodhpur, Patna, Bhubaneswar and Bhopal campuses. After looking at the response, the course would be started in more hospitals across the country in due course of time.

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The government is planning to start the course soon to fill the gap created by the paucity of specialist doctors as well as to bring back the concept of family physicians, official sources told the news agency.

“This would reduce the burden on specialist doctors as people seek treatment for ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, minor gastric problems, paediatric issues etc.The idea is to fill in the gap created by the paucity of specialist doctors by providing a holistic treatment to an entire family taking into account hereditary problems and medical history,” an official source said.

“In the past, family physicians were the go-to person in case of any ailment. Since such doctors were well versed with a family’s medical history, they were quite effective in providing general healthcare to the people and eliminating in most cases, the need to visit specialist doctors like cardiologists, endocrinologists, paediatrics and gastroenterologists etc,” the source added.

The concept of family medicine is no longer in vogue, hence, with this course one will have the option of doing MD in Family Medicine after completing MBBS, the official source added.

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Further, officials of the Union Health Ministry and NITI Aayog had recently held a meeting to discuss about the courses and which AIIMS campuses will it be available. More than 10,000 posts of surgeons, gynaecologists, physicians and paediatricians are still lying vacant in community health centres and primary health centres across the country, the source added.

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