SAY NO: To Mandatory (CDE) being imposed by Maharashtra State Dental Council – THE LETTER TO MSDC PRESIDENT

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APPEAL: Write to Maharashtra State Dental Council (MSDC) on helpdeskmsdcmumbai@gmail.com by 30th November 2017 – They want to know our suggestions. Please share as much as you can.

1.NEWS in Navabharat, Nagpur Plus_29-11-2017 http://epaper.enavabharat.com/rsclipshow.php?im=http%3A%2F%2Fepaper.enavabharat.com%2Fcrop_images%2F11292017091313.jpg&editioncode=71

2. NEWS in The Hitavada, Nagpur City Line_22-11-2017 http://www.ehitavada.com/epaper.aspx?lang=6&spage=NCpage&NB=2017-11-22#NCpage_11

3. NWES in Times of India, Mumbai_17-11-2017 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/dentists-upset-over-online-test-mandate/articleshow/61679147.cms

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——————————————————————————————THE LETTER TO MSDC PRESIDENT——————————————————————————————

To,

The Registrar/ President, Maharashtra State Dental Council (MSDC), Mumbai

Subject: Please don’t impose mandatory CDE and online exam for Registration and Renewal. Do so something for REVIVAL OF DENTISTRY 

The issue:

We the dental practitioners and students of Maharashtra are disturbed by the imposition of “Mandatory Continuing Dental Education (CDE) credit point system and online exam for renewal of registration” introduced by Maharashtra State Dental Council (MSDC), which shall come into force from January 2018. We are thus sending you this letter in response to your call for the suggestion on helpdeskmsdcmumbai@gmail.com requesting you to “Delink CDE and online exam from Registration and Renewal”.  We the dentists believe that the system of accumulating credit points is a new way of extracting money (course fees) from already unemployed, poorly paid and insecure dentists. Life taking unemployment: Times of India on Nov 3, 2017, reported that an “unemployed dentist had hanged himself” in Kandivali (Mumbai) “due to inability to find a job”. With mushrooming of more than 310 dental colleges (mostly private charging high fees) unevenly distributed throughout the country (Maharashtra a leading one), the employment opportunities for dentists did not grow. Many dentists have been “left with no choice” but to change their career to ‘marketing, insurance companies, public health, management, IT, call centre, modelling, or migrate abroad hoping a better prospect.

High disease burden, but low treatment seeking!

It is a common assumption that people lack awareness about oral health. However, we the dentists wish to bring to the notice of MSDC that it is the “lack of insurance coverage” clubbed with “inability to pay” which make patients refrain from treatment and live with a toothache. RGJAY now renamed as MPJAY (Mahatma Jyotirao Phule Jeevandayee Arogya Yojana) a government-sponsored health insurance schemes do not cover dental procedures. RSBY (Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana) covers some dental procedures but this scheme is not being implemented in Maharashtra. Rarely private health insurance covers some of the corporate employees. Most of the needy people turn to Government Dental Colleges and trust hospitals which lack sufficient dental surgeons hence are forced to suffer long waiting time, wage loss and other indirect costs of dental treatment. PHC, CHC, DH either doesn’t have sanctioned posts or are infrastructure disabled.

Problem with this new system of Renewal:

All dental students get permanent registration number (PRN) from Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) while pursuing BDS, there should have been no need of further registration with DCI/ MSDC and renewal every year is a total wastage. And now the online exam is being introduced as a prerequisite for registration renewal! Those who enter into the business of conducting CDE courses may use it as a quick money making the trick and neglecting regular institutional teaching and may also discourage free sharing of knowledge among fraternity and with the community. Institutions/ Private Dental Colleges pay very less actually to the faculty and such poorly paid or unemployed lot have turned to lead this exploitative business of courses. Other skills which are honed in later stages of practical life or through training in other aspects like communication skills, sensitive to local public health oral needs, sensitivity towards socio-economical and gender disparity, geopolitics of oral health policy and programs, etc. which one learns lifelong in the place where s/he is located, have no place for appreciation in this system.

The reason for HRD problem:

We wish to draw the attention towards, ‘Deficient Dental Manpower Planning and Projection’. It is not that MSDC/ DCI is unaware of this situation, the problem is your poor attitude and bad attitude towards human resources in dentistry. DNA News Paper in 2012 reported that there are “too many dentists with not enough teeth to extract” (dentist: population ratio of Maharashtra as 1:5000). The one-man expert committee was formed to take a look at the scenario, dentists are still waiting for the report of this expert committee to come out and see the recommendations of this (one man) expert. With such a depressing situation, MSDC linking their registration with CDE in which most of the courses are not so relevant for oral health needs of the masses of the country that suffer from caries, periodontal problems and oral cancer with high prevalence and have background of depravedness and unavailability, new rules will only lead to further harassment. With so many disincentives, dentistry in India appears to be “moth-eaten”.

We the dentists demand that DCI/ MSDC should:

1. Delink Registration and it’s renewal from compulsion on CDE and exam

2. Three in one formula: Create jobs and then offer in-service training, courses for dentists in various cadre to serve public under National Oral Health Program (NOHP) to actually facilitate serving alongside earning and learning

3. Create learning resources with free access to all, encourage free sharing of knowledge and expertise in classrooms and in digital media

4. Incentivise learning by creating fellowships opportunities (like UGC – JRF/ SRF, ICMR –

JRF/ SRF, ICSSR – JRF/ SRF) which shall be paid to the learners in the form of stipend/ honorarium rather than the structure of current CDE program

5. Create an Indian Council for Oral Health Research (ICOHR) at centre and state-wise branches at par with ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research) to fund research and development (R & D) opportunities of JRF/ SRF to be paid to BDS/ MDS graduates to pursue interdisciplinary research

6. Emphasis of research should be more on oral health needs of the masses, geriatric population, tribal’s and deprived population with an objective of innovative ways of service delivery “to reach the un-reached”

7. Work on including dental treatment under state-sponsored, social health insurance schemes, community health insurance schemes for poor and also encourage private health insurance companies

8. Create opportunities at PHC, CHC, DH and incentivise unemployed but motivated dentists to get absorbed into the public/ private rural areas to meet the growing public oral health needs

9. See to it that tutors/ lecturers/ professors/ are paid as per UGC norms

10. Dental students and dental practitioners committing suicide is a huge loss to the family, community, morale of peers and valuable loss to pool of human resource of this country and this loss is due to the social and economic pressure built on the dental fraternity for which, the members of MSDC and DCI should take responsibility and compensate for loss of each and every life lost of human resource in dentistry, hereafter

11. Restart the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) dental diploma/ certificate courses which have been shut down for reasons unknown to us and also launch more such institutionalised courses

More things to ponder upon:

1. How much of in-service training and career growth opportunities are there in our institutes?

2. Why there is no “in-service PG quota” implemented in every government and private colleges?

3. Why does a person joins as a dental surgeon and dies as the dental surgeon? Why there is no career – promotion path ever been thought about for dental surgeons?

4. Why no funding institute like the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) came into existence for research which may be called ass Indian Council for Dental Research (ICDR) in India yet, in spite of having an establishment of MCI and DCI at the same time almost.

*Would such research institute not promote learning?

*Would it not support research and development?

*Would it not promote “Continuing Dental Education” …

In fact, this research and development will be actual incentivised CDE (for which people will be eager to enrol)

Kindly send an acknowledgement of receipt of this e-mail.

Regards

Dr. Mithun Kherde

References:

1. Samuel S. Too many graduates in India. British Dental Journal. Vol 220. No.5 March 11, 2016
2. Unemployed dentist hangs self, TNN/ Nov 3, 2017, 04.55 AM IST
3. Dagli N, Dagli R. Increasing Unemployment among Indian Dental Graduates – High Time to Control Dental Manpower. J Int Oral Health 2015;7(3):i-ii.
4. Yadav S, Rawal G. The current status of dental graduates in India. Pan African Medical Journal. 2016. ISSN: 1937-8688
5. Pereira T. Current Challenges in Private Practice. J Int Oral Health 2017, 9:191-6
6. The imbalance of dentist-population ratio, 31 May 2017, PrepLadder
7. Tandon S. Challenges to the Oral Health Workforce in India, , Journal of Dental Education, Volume 68, Number 7 Supplement
8. Narayan A, Thomas SJ, Daniel A, Fatima S, Mathew RA. An Overview of Oral Health in India: Current Scenario and Challenges. Int J Oral Care Res 2016; 4(4):280-283
9. Too many dentists with not enough teeth to extract
10. Dentist surplus forces freeze on new colleges in India TNN | May 18, 2016, 03.58 AM IST
11. Stress In Dentistry — It Could Kill You! Oral Health September 1, 2007 by Randy Lang. DDS, D.Ortho
12. Future of dental graduates looks to be dark in India, Harish Dido, merinews, power t people, 14 May, 2016
13. Pranab Mukherjee_ Scarcity of dentists in rural areas_ President Pranab Mukherjee, With one dentist for every 50,000 people, dentist to population ratio acute in rural India TNN | Updated: Dec 24, 2016, 10.23 AM IST
14. Dentist-patient ratio at abysmal 1:8000, Ministry data shows

        

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