Let me explain.
An engineering college, has many departrments and an administrative office. The administrative office deals with the pay and other functions.
The departments include, Mechanical, Engineering etc in an engineering college and Maths, English etc in an Arts college ( I have no idea about IIM)
The staff include
1. Professors
2. Lecturers
3. Lab Workers
4. Sweepers and Drivers
5. Principal etc
What is the purpose of all these staff... To teach the students......
Suppose students do not join for 5 years........ How much work do these people do..... (You can calculate)
Now come to the budget of the college.
The expenses are the costs involved in
1. Salary
2. Maintenance of the building
3. Papers / Lab articles etc
Now come to the income
1. Fees paid by the students.
Take IIT, IIM or even a government school. Obviously the fees paid is negligible and is about the 5 % of the expenses and the government spends 95 % as a subsidy.
Now come to an UNDERGRADUATE COURSE in a Medical College.
Medical College,as you may know is never a college alone (This is where we differ from the american system of medical school).
By default, it is attached to a Hospital.
A medical college, should have the following departments
1. Anatomy
2. Physiology
3. Biochemistry
4. Pharmacology
5. Pathology
6. Microbniology
7. FM
8. SPM
9. ENT
10. Ophthal
11. Medicine
12. Surgery
13. Paediatrics
14. Ortho
15. OG
16. Radiology
17. Radiotherapy
18. Anaesthesia
19. Dermatology
20 Psychiatry
These 20 departments are must for a medical college. in addition you can have any number of more departments like Urology, Cardiology etc.
All these departments have
1. Professor
2. Assistant Professors
3. Staff Nurse
4. Pharmacist
5. Ward boy
6 Sweeper
in addition the college also has an administrative office. concerned with maintenance of hospital, DRUGS, Equipments etc
Now you see how the budget is used
Expenses
1. Salary
2. Drugs
3. Equipments
4. Maintenance
5. Stationery
Income
1. Fees.
2. Subsidy by the government.
Now comes the important point.
Of the 20 departments, I mentioned, only 3 - Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology are exclusively for Students.
ALL OTHER DEPARTMENTS are for TREATING PATIENTS
Of the expenses invloved, the expenses that are invovlved towards educating AN MBBS STUDENT is the expense of the salary of the staff of the above 3 departments (out of the 20) and the stationery.
ALL OTHER EXPENSES are for treating PATIENTS
In short, government is subsidising, NO DOUBT, but 98 % of the subsidy is for HEALTH and less than 1.5 % is for Education.
But what will you hear. They will calculate the annual expenses and divide it by the number of students and tell that we are spending 22 lakhs for each doctor.
The truth is that EVEN IF A MEDICAL COLLEGE DOES NOT ADMIT MBBS STUDETNS, it will still have 98 % of its expenses for TREATING PATIENTS.
Now come to the Post Graduates..... The government does not even spend that 1.5 % (except for the PGs in the 3 departments I have mentioned).
In other words.....
Let me ask these simple question.
1. What will be the workload of a professor in IIM when students are on strike. Will it increase or decrease
2. What about when a Post Graduate Resident is on strike.
If there are NO STUDENTS JOINING in a course, will you run the course or shut it down. you will shut it down and bring the expenses to ZERO
If you are going to shut down KEM just becasue the PGs are on strike, will the patients allow you.
In other words, is the subsidy the government, WRONGLY AND INTENTIONALLY says that it is giving for Medical Education, a subsidy for educating students or for treating patients.
Treating the patient free or for money is not the theme of this article. I have written this to tell you that the subsidy which we are supposed to get is not for us doctors....... but for the patients
Note: please share your opinion about this issue raised by Bruno in this thread in PG forum http://www.rxpgonline.com/postt44347.html
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