Palghar to get medical college.

The newly-formed Palghar district will have a new and functional medical college from the next academic year. The college is one of the five colleges that the state government and the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) approved for the state. The college will cater to aspiring students from Palghar district as well as the adjoining Mumbai and Thane district.

Dr Arun Jamkar, vice-chancellor of the MUHS who was in the city for the chancellors meet recently, said the MUHS was intent on ensuring that the affiliated colleges adhered to the norms and fulfilled all criteria related to infrastructure and faculties. 'We have a system in place for checking if the colleges are fulfilling the infrastructure norms and will soon be implementing academic audit of the colleges to ensure that the subjects are being taught properly and there are sufficient faculty,' said Dr Jamkar.

Dr Jamkar said the university had been preparing a module that would be integrated with the curriculum. “The module will deal with medical ethics and communication skills as the doctors have to interact with patients and their relatives when they start practising their profession,' said Dr Jamkar.

Work on preparing the module on ethics and communication skills had been started after former minister of state for medical education Jitendra Awhad had insisted the same be included in the curriculum due to the increasing instances of wrangles between doctors and relatives of patients wherein.

Sources in MUHS said that after the university had approved the setting up of 29 new colleges from the medical, dental, unani, ayurveda, nursing and other streams in its academic council last year, the list had been forwarded to the government out of which five colleges have been approved.

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