The Uttar Pradesh (UP) government’s Mission Niramaya scheme, introduced to uplift the quality of paramedical education in the state, is said to be in full swing as the government claims to have made several reforms to strengthen the medical education system. In less than a year since its launch on September 8, 2022, a total of 702 institutions were evaluated for quality, backlog of 1,097 affiliation applications cleared, 800 plus CCTV cameras installed to curb cheating, and 20 defaulter institutes penalised, among other things, Alok Kumar, principal secretary, Medical Education, Government of Uttar Pradesh, told FE Education Online.
The Uttar Pradesh government has recruited 12 mentor institutes to guide 110 mentee institutes under this scheme to provide quality paramedical training to all students. These institutes received five-day training in the first phase by the State Medical Faculty and its technical partner JHPIEGO in December 2022. “We have also introduced a Common Nursing Entrance Test (CNET) in the academic year 2021-22 to streamline admissions in all degree programmes including Bachelor of Science (BSc), Post-Basic BSc and Master of Science (MSc),” Kumar added. For the 2023-24 academic year, an innovative online centralised admissions process for admission to Diploma Courses is being introduced to make it easier for grade 12th pass outs to opt for colleges of their choice based on marks obtained in board exams.
The government claims to have in place an Affiliation and Accreditation system to inspect medical educational institutes through the Quality Council of India (QCI) on the basis of infrastructure, pedagogical processes, and learning outcomes. So far only 275 institutes have been granted affiliation, while applications of 577 institutes were declined for not being up to the mark, and 195 institutes refused to have their premises inspected, a data sheet by the Medical Education department showed.
About 96% of the nursing seats in Uttar Pradesh are in private nursing colleges and the government claims to have adopted stringent regulatory measures to keep a check on them and maintain transparency. “We are working on measures to ensure fair pay provided to paramedics in the private sector. Furthermore, we have created five to six levels of promotions for nurses to boost their career prospects,” Kumar said.
Since elected to power in 2017, the Yogi Adiyanath government claims to have bolstered the health and medical infrastructure in the state with increased hospitals. However, there has been an acute shortage of quality healthcare workers. In a recent recruitment drive for nurses by the State Public Service Commission, less than 3% of applicants, all of whom possess valid degrees, diplomas, managed to exhibit a minimum knowledge benchmark. Only 3,012 positions could be filled out of 4,500 nursing vacancies despite 1,03,200 applicants received, available data showed. To address this gap, the Mission Niramaya aims to prepare a high quality paramedical workforce,” Kumar noted.
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn