Enrolment for the course for Indian medical graduates will start from September 17, 2020; course expected to improve prescription practices amongst medical graduates
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has launched an online course on prescribing skills for Indian medical graduates (IMG) (pursuing or completed internship) on the occasion of Patient Safety Day.
The course is meant for improving prescription practices among Indian Medical Graduates and will be run by National Institute of Epidemiology (ICMR-NIE), Chennai.
While launching the course, Prof Balram Bhargava, Secretary, DHR and Director General, ICMR said, “ICMR is committed to ensuring that the country’s medical graduates are at par with their international counterparts. The Council, through its institute ICMR-NIE has successfully completed a basic course in biomedical Research. The course has now been made compulsory for postgraduates by the Medical Council of India (MCI). Building on the success, we will ensure that this digital course on prescribing Skills for Indian Medical Graduates is effective.”
Dr Rajni Kaul, course coordinator, ICMR, informed, “This course was guided by Technical Advisory Group (TAG) set up by ICMR. ICMR has established National Virtual Centre of Clinical Pharmacology (NvCCP) in the year 2019 comprising of 15 Rational Use of Medicine Centres (RUMCs) located in top medical institutions across the country. The course is the outcome of the work done by the experts from these medical colleges.”
Dr V P Kamboj, Chairman, Technical Advisory Group said, “The need and importance of the programme were felt by Prof. Balram Bhargava. Subsequently, feedback received from medical fraternity regarding prescription errors this activity was undertaken. The expert faculty members in clinical pharmacology and medicine from ICMR-NvCCP network have developed this online course on prescribing Skills for Indian Medical Graduates covering topics relevant to India’s health problems.”
Dr Nilima Kshirsagar, lead expert stated,“The course is intended for Indian medical graduates during internship and deals with various aspects of Dos and Don’ts of prescribing, how to administer drugs and communicate instructions to patients, from general principle into specific prescribing for infections, eye, ear, skin, psychiatric diseases, women, children, elderly, emergency situations, chronic diseases of heart, high BP, diabetes and palliative care.”
The course constitutes 40 video lectures of 20 minutes to be taken online over three months at learners’ pace. The course involves a pre-test to evaluate participants prior knowledge, MCQs to be answered after seeing the modules, evaluate a prescription for appropriateness, all this to assess if the course has improved the participants knowledge. A certificate of participation will be given on successful
completion of the course.
Interns are expected to register now, appear for pre-test on October 4, 2020 or October 11, 2020. Then Indian medical graduates will have access to course from October 12, 2020 and it closes on December 30, 2020.
The enrolment for the course will start from September 17, 2020. The course details will be available at https://main.icmr.nic.in/content/icmr-online-prescribing-skills-course-indian-medical-graduates-img