Telangana 1st yr MBBS students stage protest, demand re-examination

HYDERABAD: About 50 first-year medical students from several medical colleges protested on Friday at Osmania Medical College over alleged discrepancies in their supplementary examinations held in June and July this year. The protesting medical students are now demanding a re-examination because they are upset with the alleged discrepancies.

The first-year MBBS students from the 2020–2024 batch claimed that their paper was not set in accordance with National Medical Commission (NMC) standards and that they were not given enough time to complete their exam. The students claimed that a large number of them failed because the exam papers were prepared incorrectly, causing them mental agony and stress as they were losing a valuable academic year.

According to NMC's assessment module for UG medical education 2019, specific guidelines have been released and an expert from the proposed GMER 2019-university examination has stated as in 11.2.1 and 11.22 that a component of MCQs shall be included to the weightage of 20 percent of total theory marks.

One of the protesting students told Newstap, "Except for KNR University, Warangal, all medical universities have introduced MCQs. Enquiring about and studying the previous question paper, it looks to be fully deviated from guidelines issued by NMC, which is the evaluation module for UG medical education 2019. It is our view that the question paper for the 2022/June exam was entirely diagnosis-based, as is expected of final-year MBBS students who receive clinical diagnostic training. We are not subjected to such training as first-year medical students". Furthermore, COVID-19 made a huge impact, causing even more damage by denying students access to physical and practical (anatomy dissection) classes.

Another first-year MBBS student said, "The first-year MBBS candidates are losing nearly 90 to 120 marks in all three subjects — biochemistry, anatomy, and physiology — which has a greater impact on the results of students who later face pressure and other consequences. This resulted in severe depression and anxiety, causing harm to the students' mental health."

"We are failing not because of a lack of subject knowledge, but because of a lack of clinical expertise and a lack of time in exams due to the university's refusal to add MCQs. We urge that a committee be formed with at least two parents as members for the purpose of analysing the question papers and NMC rule recommendations. We request the university authorities for the addition of marks to the extent of clinical-based questions and pass the students who failed due to no fault of theirs, as well as change the pattern of the question paper issued by the Assessment Module of UG medical education 2019", the first-year MBBS student demanded.

Incidentally, the first-year MBBS students met Telangana Finance Minister Harish Rao on Thursday and requested for a re-examination from the KNRUHS. The Minister reportedly gave a positive response and promised to order a re-examination, the students claimed. Dr B Karunakar Reddy, the Vice-Chancellor of Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS, has not yet responded to this though.