It’s a tough time for the exam going Post-Graduate medical and dental doctors after the Supreme Court of India rejected the plea made by students seeking directions for waiving the final examination of final year PG students.
Most of the universities in India have announced months of July and August for the examinations of final year post graduate medical and dental students.
A senior professor of psychiatry in a premier medical college of New Delhi requesting anonymity had said that he has never seen his post graduate students in such a bad psychological condition in whole of his career spanning 32 years in this reputed medical college of the country.
“Our frontline corona warriors are depressed, on a daily basis I am examining 10-15 post graduate students of medical and dental streams who are not been able to cope with the stress of Covid-19, and mostly the topper students are in the patients. The students who were infected with corona virus are the worst affected as they are not been able to reproduce the thing they have studied. Covid-19 has definite effect on memory and many studies conducted throughout the world have proved it” said the senior psychiatrist.
He further said that he was very optimistic that the apex court would waive their exams but the decision of the court cannot be questioned and is a binding on us.
He also advised the examiners to mark the examination papers leniently, compassionately and not to fail the students as many students are reporting to the psychiatry dept. after their exam with the complaint that they have wrongly written the content in the exam paper and this is happening even with the topper students of the batch.
“These are the effects of Covid-19 on mental, physical and psychological health and would take some time to wane. During the practical exams too, I would suggest the examiners to consider the performance during the three year tenure and not only the day of exam because the performance would be severely affected in students who had contracted Covid-19 infection” he said.
He underscored that this year they are adopting a simple criteria for passing the medical and dental students in their university and that is appearing in the exam and attempting shall be the criteria for passing the students and if they have done good then give more marks but not to fail anyone, it would be cruel on our part.
“The specialty medical and dental associations must informally tell the examiners not to fail the students as formal letters cannot be issued in this respect. The second wave has caused a wide spread destruction of human life as well as psychological health of the people who have suffered from it and medical and dental students are not an exception to it” he stressed.
Dr. Franziska Knolle, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK and co-associates in their study concluded that German and UK responders reported a subjective worsening of the general psychological symptoms and 20–50% of German and UK responders reached the clinical cut-off for depressive and dysthymic symptoms as well as anxieties, it specifically shows the need for tailored intervention systems to support large proportions of the general public.
