Career in limbo: Delay in MBBS results force KNRUHS students to put off internship plans

Hyderabad: Sarath (name changed), a final-year MBBS student at Gandhi Medical College, has been sitting idle at home for the past one-and-a-half months. He wrote his MBBS exams in June 2022 and has been waiting to apply for internships. But the delay in exam results has confined him to the four walls of his home.

This is not an isolated story but is the situation of around 4,000 final-year MBBS students studying at Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS), the state health university. They have been waiting for their final results for around one-and-a-half months now.

This delay has affected the internship plans of the students which in turn has disturbed their NEET PG entrance plans. "To write NEET PG, we need to complete one year of internship. Since our results are not out, we are unable to start our internship. And as a result, we will not be able to write the NEET PG exam in 2023 also," says Sarath.

The students are worried and they say all the neighbouring states, including Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh, conducted the exams at the same time but they have published the results on time. These states have also started internships for their students, they say. "In AP, they started internships in March 2022," pointed out one of the students.

Only Telangana is lagging behind, alleged the students, and added that their peers in other states have already started their internships. Even in KNRUHS, students from other universities have come and started their internships. According to sources, annually, around 400 students do internships in KNRUHS.

In 2022, the final theory exam for MBBS students in the state was conducted on 29 May and the practical exams ended on 15 June. Ideally, the results should have been out by the first week of July but it was delayed by over a month.

"It is due to the negligence of the professors. None of the professors are interested in correcting the papers. We came to know that a lot of papers are still to be evaluated by the professors," said Sarath.

Further, he explained how the delay is adding to the delay already caused by the pandemic. "I joined Gandhi Medical College in 2017. Ideally, the MBBS course should finish in 4.5 years but for our batch, it took five years because of the pandemic. Now, we need to complete our internship in a year after the results and wait for another six months for the NEET PG exam. This delay will make it at least seven years to be eligible for PG," he added.

Recently, an MBBS final-year student tweeted, "Please make sure that KNRUHS does its job punctually. We have been sitting idle at homes for the last two months due to the delay in MBBS results and these additional 8 medical colleges would be a great burden for KNRUHS."

In August 2022, the Telangana government sanctioned eight new medical colleges in eight districts in the state—Rajanna Sircilla, Vikarabad, Khammam, Kamareddy, Karimnagar, Jayashankar Bhupalpally, Komaram Bheem Asifabad, and Jangaon.

Ramesh (name changed), one of the parents of a final-year MBBS student, said, "The Telangana government has just sanctioned eight new government medical colleges in the state. But what about the existing ones? Why are they not able to follow the calendar of events?" He also asked why the Telangana Chief Minister was talking about medical students in Ukraine but not doing anything about the medical students in his own state.

Delay in PG results

Interestingly, the PG medical results that were declared on 30 July were also announced late. The students finished their final practical exam in the first week of June. Ideally, the results should have come out by the end of June or the first week of July.

Due to this delay, around 400 PG students have been rendered unemployed. "Without registration (or the official license to practice), we cannot work. Only if we get our results, we can apply for registration," said Ashok (name changed), one of the final-year PG students of Osmania Medical College.

He explained how it has foiled his plans of senior residentship and of pursuing Masters of Chirurgiae (MCh), the highest Masters degree in Surgical Science. "I had secured senior residentship in AIIMS Bibinagar and ESI hospital but I could not join because of the delay in results," said Ashok.

Another PG final-year student took to Twitter to share her despair. "I cleared the INISS exam July 2022 with an AIR 1 (for MCh. in Pediatric Surgery) and secured a seat in PGIMER. I am in risk of losing the eligibility criteria just because of the delay in declaration of results of MD/MS exams conducted by KNRUHS in May 2022," she tweeted.

Ashok said KNRUHS is a new university and it will take time for it to function smoothly. At the same time, he added that before the bifurcation of the state, there were never such long delays in the state health university NTR University in Vijayawada.

All the medical colleges in the state come under the Director of Medical Education. However, when NewsMeter contacted DME Ramesh Reddy, he refused to respond and said he was not the person to comment on the issue. NewsMeter also tried to contact the Vice-Chancellor of the university but he has not responded to our calls. The copy will be updated once we hear from him.

The names have been changed as they wished to stay anonymous.