High Quality Doctors – Imaginary Benefit of NEET
Yes people that’s true.
While we know that NEET is bad, and any discerning person can see that, we need to address some concerns of people who derive imaginary benefits from NEET.
We present this information here to disabuse anyone of their imagination that NEET would produce good doctors. Why? Even otherwise reasonable people say have this to say “NEET ensures that we have high quality doctors!”
The argument that a standardized entrance test of high caliber can produce doctors of high caliber is flawed at many levels.
For one, the NEET is an Entrance Test, conducted BEFORE the medical education – and is based largely on 12th standard syllabus. To imagine that a firm grasp of the 12th standard is the quintessential need of a doctor’s 5-year education is naive to say the very least.
The onus of producing high-caliber doctors rests upon the medical institutions themselves. If a doctor comes out a a college after 5 and a half years of medical training and is not knowledgeable then can we blame the lack of an entrance exam such as NEET? The rigor and quality of training and of continual assessments done in the medical colleges alone are responsible for the quality of the doctors that they produce.
The Medical Council of India (MCI) does a thorough job of ensuring that EVERY single medical college in India only produces high-quality doctors!! Please let us not belittle the MCI and the medical colleges of India in a blatantly ignorant fashion.
But, for people who still insist that doctors coming out of medical colleges in India need to write some form of standardized test, then should you conduct that exam BEFORE or AFTER the medical course?
Yes! AFTER! After the medical course is completed. So? Doctor quality can have Nothing to do with entrance exams. Nothing whatsoever!
In the United States, we have something called the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Examination.) This is a three-step exam that all aspiring doctors have to pass before they can be certified to practice in the USA. These tests are taken during and AFTER the completion the medical education. And all doctors, no matter which prestigious university they pass out of, have to take the USMLE tests before being allowed to practice.
US Medical students typically take the final USMLE test AFTER completing their coursework at the medical college and during their internship year. These tests are not trivial. There are three distinct tests – and they span over multiple-days. The Step-3 of the USMLE is in fact a multi-day test!
That’s how the USA ensures that we have great doctors practicing out there. Not by having an inane 3-hour entrance exam on Physics, Chemistry and Biology that is conducted before the student even steps onto the college campus!
Ridiculous as it may seem, India thinks it can do this – with an entrance exam – that is held BEFORE the student starts college. Now people, that would be the epitome of illogical reasoning.
As said before, any standardized tests to ensure high-doctor-quality must be conducted along the lines of having a standardized exam (such as the USMLE in the USA) that every doctor has to pass before being allowed to practice.
Any argument that says the any entrance exam (such as NEET) that is held BEFORE the 5.5 year medical program commences, will ensure that we get only good doctors, is patently illogical and serves no good purpose whatsoever.
So NEET be gone.