Chennai: TNMSA Opposes Internship Extension

Opposing the Health Department's decision of extending the Compulsory Rotatory Residential Internship (CRRI) by two months to involve house surgeons in COVID-19 duty, the doctors of Tamil Nadu Medical Students' Association (TNMSA) have asked the Health Secretary and the Director of Medical Education (DME) to issue internship completion certificate without delay.

The trainee doctors in Tamil Nadu Government Medical Colleges were supposed to complete their CRRI training period in March but considering the increase in COVID cases, the Health Department recently decided to extend the internship by 2 months.

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Parents committee president and state BC employees honorary president Dr Ala Venkateswaralu alleged that the management was threatening not to relieve the house surgeons unless they completed their service for the extended two months until the end of May, though their internship was getting completed by March 23, reports Deccan Chronicle.

Commenting on the issue, the President of the Tamil Nadu Medical Students Association (TNMSA), Dr. Hariganesh told, "We joined as trainee doctors in Tamil Nadu Government Medical Colleges on March 27 last year and are about to complete the last one year CRRI training period on March 27, 2021. But the news from the Tamil Nadu Directorate of Medical Education about the completion of our training period is sad and very disturbing. News that our CRRI training period will be extended for another two months (until May) is likely to pave the way for students to prepare for postgraduate and other competitive exams."

TNMSA has requested the government, the Health Secretary, and the Director of Medical Education to issue a Certificate of Completion of Training without any delay at the end of their training period. The association further stated that the doctors have been consistent in their services and have worked day and night in order to contain the pandemic. The role of trained physicians in controlling the corona epidemic by the Government of Tamil Nadu is immense and nearly 30 per cent of practising physicians got infected by coronavirus. They were not given any relief announced on behalf of the Tamil Nadu government, stated the association.

Dr Hariganesh further added, "Many people have been infected with the corona two or three times. We were not even given special pay considering our immense service during the plague. It is not necessary to extend the training period in such a way is like adding to our difficulties."

Stressing on the demand of not extending the internship, the doctor told the daily, "We are already serving in the hospital properly from 4 to 6 hours adhering to the Madras High Court's order. There are certain kinds of works that we have to learn during this period of internship for example incubation. After learning all this, we are also serving additional duties of taking patient's request and getting an assessment for the patient, collecting COVID reports. There is no real necessity of performing clinical duties now, rather we are employed for the additional duties as mentioned before. So, extending the internship doesn't serve any educational purpose for us."