Teaching should be preferred over research in peripheral medical institutions

Abstract

The main purpose of medical education is to ensure that medical students acquire sufficient knowledge, skills, and professional efficiency that prepares them to provide good health education, and good health care or enhance existing medical knowledge, depending on the aptitude and conditions available to them in the future. This entails proficiency both in teaching and research. The teaching enhances the development of students while research advances new knowledge. Therefore, linking teaching and research is essential to both teachers and students. There are many ways of linking research to teaching; the most important of these is to set specific teaching and research goals. However, the problem comes when some teachers have no inclination or may not have time to do research due to a poor teacher–student ratio. Most of the peripheral medical colleges have a very poor teacher–student ratio as compared to one that was recommended by the Mudalier Committee in 1962.[1,2] Therefore, research should not be forced to teachers, particularly if they do not have any aptitude for it or they do not have time to pursue such activities. Contrary to this, if they have a good interest and aptitude for teaching, students taught by them excel in all fields of their later life such as teaching, patient care, research, and interpersonal relationship. Recently, the National Medical Council of India has recommended an introductory course in medical education technology[3–5] and basic research in biomedical research as mandatory for promotion. Not only that, this body has also made it mandatory that one should also publish a requisite number of research articles in indexed journals for their promotion.[6] For this reason, teachers who were already under pressure to complete the course were forced to do research, on the cost of teaching. As a result, the quality of producing good Indian Medical Graduates is defeated. Not only that, forced research has adulterated the already existing good scientific data with false-positive results. Not only that, the number of predatory scientific journals has started worldwide purely for business purposes. They started charging exorbitantly, and poor teachers have no option but to pay it. To conclude, teaching and patient care should be given more weightage over research, particularly in peripheral medical colleges, for the following reasons: Teacher–student ratio is very poor, institutions are not well equipped with research facilities, all teachers are forced to do research whether they have an aptitude for it or not. As a result, medical teaching and patient care are on a decline.