Feature

Proposed contribution of Medical students

Mahbub Hossain Srabon

In our country, each year, approximately twenty five thousand students are being enrolled in both the govt. and private medical colleges to obtain MBBS and BDS degrees. Though they are learning medical science, the opportunity to practice the acquired knowledge is very limited. During the internship, they get only one year to practice it and later on, the race for post-graduation starts. However, this one-year internship is not good enough for the future doctors in terms of serving the nation with their potential excellence.

During student life, the medical students are supposed to study and work hard to learn the critical annals of medical science. A very few number of students can concentrate on their study due to the traditional assessment system, where theory means a lot. If there were any opportunity of learning, beside the traditional ward and class based study, our future doctors would have definitely been benefitted. In the developed countries like UK or USA, medical students are associated with public health services. During their vacation or leisure period, they can join training programmes. But in our country, the scenario is different since such opportunities are restricted. Being a medical student, I work with a medical association of USA as an international member. There I found a community of students who work as volunteers or paid workers at the hospitals and the other organizations related to health service. In this way, these countries are meeting the need of health professionals and growing experienced doctors of the future.

As it is a tested way of both developing the knowledge of the medical students and serving the people, we should start it in our country as soon as possible. The government should take initiatives to set such scopes for the medical students that they can work at the hospitals, particularly at the rural heath complexes. As a good number of NGOs are working on the health sectors, they can also involve the students at their projects.

The medical students have profound knowledge about the fundamentals of maintaining health, causes of diseases and they can counsel or supervise pregnant patients, inform people about common diseases or first aids. They can also make people aware of nutrition and health. There are such scopes to work in the medical sectors for the medical students in the developed countries. Sadly, our country lacks to provide such opportunities to the medical students. If these kinds of opportunities were available here, the lack of manpower in this sector would be overcome and the students would gain more practical knowledge that help them to be good physicians in the long run.

(MBBS Student, Khulna Medical College)