ISLAMABAD: The medical students have protested the malfunctioning of Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) system that has virtually put the careers of future doctors at stake.
In an open letter, the students have raised several questions about the PMC’s capability to run the affairs of the medical profession including their examination procedures. They have urged the government not to spoil the profession that across the world was currently providing healing to humanity that is exposed to COVID-19 pandemic and was ensuring protection against future health hazards.
They have reminded that the PMC after its imposition on the medical profession has played with the future of doctors and their emotions. The carelessness and lack of professionalism of the Commission has led many premeds towards depression and some have even committed suicide. The letter reminded that after the PMC was established, it announced that all the previous scheduled provincial MDCATs are cancelled and a National MDCAT will be held on November 7.
A question arose that since the FSC syllabi of each province are different how the PMC could hold a MDCAT on a national level. The students already knew that this would create problems and it did. The original syllabus issued by PMC had a lot of topics, which were out of the syllabi of all provinces, so they had to re-evaluate it. Many students got really stressed due to the fact they were preparing for the provincial MDCATs on October 18 (UHS), according to their separate syllabi, but now suddenly PMC switched to a national syllabus with many out off-course topics.
The judicial orders provided that PMC to make an academic board, before they could issue the syllabus, after it was found that the PMC had gone against its own Act, which stated that the syllabus can only be issued after the academic board has been made.
This resulted in the test being postponed till November 29 that led to students’ time being wasted further. The letter recalled that the vice president of PMC, Ali Raza promised that there won’t be any out of syllabus questions in the test; if there were any such questions, the students could jot them down on a post-examination evaluation paper, that would be provided to each student, and a committee would be sitting in each centre, all over Pakistan which would delete all of these questions. Unfortunately, on the day of the test no such evaluation form was given and there was no committee sitting in each centre. The PMC thus went against its own promises. Furthermore, it was a shock and a surprise to many of students of premeds when they found there were a lot of questions in the test which didn’t even have the right option in the answer choices, some had two right options in them, along with that there were a number of different questions which were out of the syllabi of each province. This led to a lot of confusion and panic among them.
The PMC later gave undertaking in a superior court that the PMC will look into these wrongs. It was announced on December 16 that there were 14 questions, which were out of syllabus and students have been given maximum marks for these questions. For awarding these marks, PMC used a statistical formula called Cronbach’s Alpha, according to which they awarded 1 mark to that student who somehow got the ambiguous question right, but they awarded 0.1 mark to that student who got that ambiguous question wrong. It’s utterly unfair. It reminded that after the result was announced, on the same day many students started to complain that when they opened their result, they have been marked absent on the gazette, even though they did appear in the test. Another problem faced by them due to the carelessness of the PMC is that a result of the student is shown on the PMC website by a different name (not the student’s name) this has caused a lot of alarm and stress to students.
The PMC currently has removed the results from their website and has also removed their statement regarding the ambiguous question. They have now issued a statement saying that due to complaints of students being marked absent and our computer malfunctioning, the issue is being resolved shortly. Many students are complaining that they didn’t even get grace marks for those ambiguous questions especially those with paper code B and C. They make this point because after the paper was taken, it got released on the internet, so the students started to check their paper and found out they scored a specific number of marks in the test, but when the result was released the marks didn’t coincide with what they expected. All this has resulted in chaos and utter confusion.
The students maintained that the government has imposed on them an organisation which doesn’t even know how to set a proper paper and declare results properly. How the PMC will give licences to doctors, regulate medical education and doctors in the country if they can’t even administer a proper test with no errors and no careless mistakes. They don’t listen to affectees in these hard times where their future is at stake. The PMC should be answerable to its childish and unprofessional behaviour. The open letter has made it clear that the students will go to any extent for seeking justice.
