M.Sc. postgraduates clamour for inclusion in MCI Act

Ananya Panda

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 20

Decrying the latest guidelines for human resource on diagnostic labs under the Clinical Establishments Act (CEA) 2010, a group of M.Sc. medical postgraduates (in microbiology and biochemistry) from across the country today staged a protest in the national Capital against the provisions demanding the inclusion of medical M.Sc. degree in the CEA and in the first schedule of the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956.

The resentment came in the backdrop of the recent implementation of the Clinical Establishments Rules in two states --- Rajasthan and Jharkhand— leaving the section concerned jittery saying the move if implemented by all state governments will render hundreds of them jobless or demoted to the role of laboratory technicians.

“We protest this unjust exclusion and demands that the National Council for Clinical Establishments modifies its guidelines to accommodate medical M.Sc degree (irrespective of Ph.D) as a qualification to interpret and sign diagnostic test reports in Microbiology and Biochemistry. We insist that laboratory practice is not the practice of medicine alone hence it should not be restricted to doctors alone,” said Sridhar Rao, president of National M.Sc. Medical Teachers’ Association (NMMTA) which is pursuing the matter .

Several private hospitals have postgraduates practising in diagnostic labs independently at a time when the Clinical Establishments (Central Government) Rules, 2012 make it mandatory that all diagnostic laboratories should have doctors, registered with MCI or State Medical Council, to do the task.