Bangalore Waking Up to Emergency Medicine
17-May-2011
Editors Desk




Fellowship in Emergency Medicine at Columbia Asia Hospitals
The Society of Emergency Medicine India (SEMI) approved a 1 year Fellowship in Emergency Medicine at Columbia Asia Hospitals Bangalore, last month. The first batch is due to start from June 2011 onwards. Columbia Asia hospitals has a total of 14 emergency beds spread between two of its hospitals (275 beds). The training curriculum, created by SEMI, is well structured for the 12 month training program.

Speaking to EmergencyMedicine.in, Dr. S. Saravana Kumar MD(Accident & EM), Head of Clinical Services, said that the statistics from NIMHANS & WHO Injury Prevention & Safety Promotion, showed 392358 trauma cases with 33601 deaths in Bangalore, in 2010 alone. He said that the availability of qualified manpower is still lacking in Karnataka state, as only few institutions offer EM training programs. This required an integrated emergency care program covering all types of emergency & trauma care, which Columbia Asia has initiated in Bangalore in association with SEMI.

Click here to go to SEMI website (www.semi.org.in)
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MD (Emergency Medicine) at Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences
A check on the MCI website yesterday revealed yet another medical college approved for starting the 3-year postgraduation, MD (Emergency Medicine). Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences & Research Centre - Bangalore, under the Rajiv Gandhi University, has been permitted for one seat in MD (EM). This is the first medical college in Karnataka to get MD (EM). Entry is likely to be through the Karnataka Common Entrance Test or via the expensive management quota.

Click here for list of medical colleges with MCI recognised MD (Emergency Medicine)
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With several of our EmergencyMedicine.in support staff based in Bangalore, this is one of the cities which we closely track with respect to awareness of emergency medicine. 1 year Fellowship has been available at St. Johns Medical College Hospital for almost a decade and Apollo Hospitals Bangalore started 3 year MCEM residency training from 2009, in addition to its 1 year RCGP affliated Fellowship in EM. Bowring & Lady Curzon Hospital, Ramaiah Medical College Hospital, and others, upgraded their emergency rooms, a few years ago. Despite this, the awareness of EM in the medical colleges & various hospitals within Bangalore is extremely poor. The hospital administrators are unaware that EM is a distinct specialty requiring EM trained manpower to run EM departments. Instead they seem to derive comfort from the fact that traditional MBBS Casualty Medical Officers (CMOs) or rotating specialty registrars, were the best for the job. The average payscales for EM physicians in Bangalore are also among the lowest (Click here for payscales). In contrast, the cities of Chennai and Hyderabad have a high degree of awareness about EM and pediatric EM.

Hopefully, with coordinated efforts of the EM community in Bangalore, this blindness to EM should disappear in the coming months, allowing people of Bangalore to access high quality emergency care. Also, the 2000+ students & interns in the city's medical colleges should begin to see EM as a reliable career choice outside the traditional postgraduate rat race.

- EmergencyMedicine.in

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