Delhi: Awaiting fresh batch, medical college hospitals to retain services of outgoing residents
Even as MBBS graduates continue to raise the demand to delay the NEET-PG exam for the year 2022, several central government hospitals have been given permission to retain their outgoing batch of post-graduate students with pay.
“NEET-PG 2022 has not been held so far and the fresh batch of PG students is not expected to join before the end of July. It has been decided… services of these post-graduate students as residents may be continued to be utilised with full pay/stipend until fresh batches of post-graduate students have joined physically to ensure that there is no shortage of residents in handling the clinical duties,” said a communication from the Directorate General of Health Services to hospitals such as Safdarjung, Lady Hardinge and RML in Delhi along with central government hospitals from other states.
The delay in last year’s exam and counselling has led to the first-year post-graduate students just joining their colleges as the third-year students prepare to leave after their final examination in May, officials said. This will leave the medical college hospitals again short of one batch of PG students who work in hospitals as junior residents, with the new batch not likely to join before the end of July even if the exams are conducted as scheduled on May 21, they added.
The NEET-PG examination is usually conducted in January. This year’s examination was earlier scheduled for March as the counselling for the 2021 batch began only in January this year. It was further pushed to May 21 as the counselling process got prolonged.
Last year, resident doctors working in medical college hospitals had taken to the streets because the delay in examination and counselling for the 2021 batch had left them short of manpower by nearly one-third.
