STATE MEDICAL COUNCIL TO UPSKILL DOCS WITH NMC

MUMBAI: The Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) has partnered with the National Medical Commission (NMC) to provide doctors with essential expertise and practical skills for managing medico-legal issues effectively. MMC, serving as a quasi-judicial body tasked with overseeing medical education and ethics in the state, has noted a growing demand from its members for guidance on handling medico-legal cases. This demand particularly pertains to addressing allegations of misconduct and appeals filed by patients and their families against registered medical practitioners.

“To begin with, we have designed a workshop, which will be held on Saturday, with the help of the Ethic and Medical Registration Board of NMC. We will have distinguished speakers and trainers from the medico-legal field to share their insights and experiences,” said Dr Vinky Rughwani, administrator of MMC, who added that the workshop will feature interactive sessions, case studies, and practical exercises, offering participants a hands-on learning experience.

Representatives from medical colleges and district hospitals across Maharashtra will be attending the workshop.

“They will be training the doctors from different medical colleges and private practitioners also about the legal cases, that means how the complaints are done, how the complaints are to be dealt with, how we can say that this is medical negligence,” said Dr Rughwani.

The Council approximately has 1.8 lakh registered doctors and sees around 9,000 new registrations annually. “One of the functions of MMC is to hear the cases and complaints against the registered medical practitioners. As the Council, we hear both the parties- the doctor and the complainant before deciding if the doctor has done any medical negligence. Apart from the Council, local medical colleges, government medical colleges, too get such complaints,” said Dr Runghwani.

“By fostering collaboration and knowledge-sharing, we hope to strengthen the healthcare system’s ability to address misconduct and appeal cases with diligence and integrity,” said Dr Rughwani.

Apart from helping its registered practitioners get an insight on medico-legal cases, MMC has decided to fast-track the 692 pending cases which also include medical negligence complaints.

Dr Rughwani said they are planning to get help from medical experts from the respective fields. “For example, if the complaint is related to gynaecology, we will take the gynaecologist’s help to review the complaint and hearing. We plan to hold a hearing every week to finish the backlog,” he said.