New Delhi, Oct 18: With a view to regulate functioning of the mushrooming medical colleges across the country and make medical education more effective, the Medical Council of India has recommended among other things a mandatory functioning of three years for hospitals to convert into medical colleges. Favouring mandatory regulations, chairman of MCI's regulations committee Ketan Desai said they should be updated timely so that contemporary and long term requirements were met.

"We have recommended that a hospital to convert itself into a medical college, it should be functional for minimum three years so that it could fulfil the requirement of the teaching and clinical material for the students," he told reporters at a two-day workshop on 'review of regulation in medical education'.
On the pre-requisite of possessing minimum 25 acres of land for starting a medical college, Desai said, "required land in a single stretch may not be always available. So without compromising on the area we have recommended that the college could be constructed on two separate pieces of land within a distance of ten kilometers".

Mooting the idea of integration of infrastructural facilities within institutions, desai said "besides being cost effective it would also utilize the facilities to the optimum."
Over 150 participants including the deans of the various medical colleges, directors of medical education and health administrators attended the workshop organised by the council.

Bureau Report