Reviving general medicine
Dr Seshayyan emphasised the challenges concerning medical education, particularly the decline of general medicine in favor of specialisations.
“We’ve lost the culture of the family physician. Everyone wants to specialize, creating a top-heavy system with gaps in general medicine. De-emphasise speciality training. This is not super-speciality, this is sub-speciality. We are giving it a larger-than-life image,” she noted.
She also stressed the need for experiential learning and hands-on training.
“In medicine, handling a patient alone is different from doing so with supervision. Students must be exposed to ground realities early. On the other hand, you cannot have 30 interns on one patient. We need better development of rural and smaller hospitals for internships and training,” she added.
Merging industry and academia
Meanwhile, while Dr Seshayyan highlighted limited hands-on experience for interning doctors in India, Dr Sivaprasad praised the recent efforts by the government and companies to increase the industrial experience for engineering students.
Reflecting on his own experiences, he remarked on the lack of hands-on learning during internships.
“You can’t build part of the ship on campus; we have to go to shipyards for internships. However, there were no facilities for the interns. We were left to stand and observe others. Now, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) funds are being opened for interns and graduates to learn and improve their skills,” Dr Sivaprasad, a Professor of Ship Technology, said.
He also called for greater industry-academia collaboration, advocating for teachers to take on real-world industrial problems and engage students in practical solutions.