The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) on Monday withdrew recognition from the Rawal Medical College Islamabad (RMCI) and issued advisory notes to 10 hospitals regarding their failure of systems and management.
The council also set down a penalty of permanently cancelling licences of doctors found to have prepared medically false or incorrect post-mortem reports, and suspended eight council officials.
According to a statement released by the PMDC, the council at its 194th meeting reviewed the inspection report for the RMCI and decided to withdraw recognition in view of the college`s failure to meet the evaluation criteria for a private medical college.
`As the matter is pending before the high court, the council directed for the decision to be placed before the court for further proceedings. The students of the college would be adjusted in other recog-nized colleges in the area as per law,` it said.
However, RMCI head Khagan Waheed Khawaja, who is also the general secretary of the Private Medical and Dental Institutions (Pami), said that the council cannot withdraw recognition because his college meets all the requirements.
He said 750 marks out of 1,000 are needed to meet the council`s criteria. The RMCI obtained 789 in the medical college inspection and 862 in the dental college inspection, he said.
According to another statement, which did not mention the names of individuals against whom action was taken, the council also approved disciplinary action against 10 doctors for the suspension or cancellation of their licences while another four were issued notices to explain their conduct borne out of a review of evidence.
The council also approved the structure of new evaluation criteria for medical and dental colleges that, in addition to initial recognition criteria, entails a periodic performance evaluation of colleges and their corresponding rating in categories which will be publicly available for students.
Colleges in lower categories would have a fixed period of one to two years to improve their performance and be promoted to the higher category failing which they will face penal action including thesuspension of admissions and thereafter, withdrawal of recognition.
The council also decided that all public colleges will also be evaluated for performance and rated, so as to enable provincial governments and universities responsible for these public colleges to focus on improvement.
Colleges that improve their performance would also receive incentives including the right to increase their allocated seats subject to proper enhancement of facilities.
The inspections would be carried out using an online reporting system to avoid any interference.
The detailed tools, proforma and guidelines for the inspection will be finalised and approved within the next two weeks to enable the council to start many pending inspections and set down a schedule of performance evaluation of all existing colleges.
Colleges will be provided the new criteria in advance for enable to carry out self evaluations after being introduced to it through detailed workshops and seminars to be held by the PMDC.
The council also considered a detailed presentation on the introduction of a national level centralised entrance examination to medical and dental programmes which would seek to ensure merit across the board while catering for weaknessesin the education system in different areas of Pakistan so as to avoid putting students at a disadvantage for reasons beyond their control.
The statement clams that in administrative action, the council suspended a senior officer, deputy registrar, an assistant registrar, four officers and a member of the staff in response to inquiries and directed for show-cause notices to be issued for the hearing of these matters.
Their actions included the theft of an original file by a doctor from the offices of the PMDC against whom the council directed an FIR to be lodged and disciplinary action be initiated.
The council also approved immediately advertising for the posts of registrar, director finance and an external auditor and while approving the new management organogram of PMDC authorised the human resources committee to formulate the necessary criteria for the heads of each department and advertise these at the earliest.
An official of PMDC, requesting not to be quoted, claimed that the deputy registrar was suspended because she was the strongest candidate for the post of registrar.
`The allegation against her is meagre as she followed orders of the court and former president of council, who is also member of the current council,` he said.
