Medical school quotas

What is needed is incentivisation of medical jobs to attract females with high aptitude, but also male students

The proposal by the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) to allot 50 per cent of medical school seats to male students is unfair. Admissions into medical schools need to be based solely on merit, rather than on gender or provincial affiliations. The medical discipline is one that requires utmost care in selection of candidates as they will eventually be responsible for human lives. Thankfully, the letter submitted by the PMDC to the Punjab health department in this regard was reviewed carefully and the proposal, for now, will not be implemented. However, it must be ensured that no such proposal, which attempts to allot gender-based quotas in medical schools, is entertained in the future either.

The field of medicine requires meticulous and advanced skills in the areas of logic, analytics and problem-solving. Hence, a qualifying candidate, whether male or female, must be selected over someone who has less aptitude instead of merely filling a quota. The primary objective of medical school should be to graduate apt and skilled doctors to improve our national quality of health care. Merit-based selection will encourage those students, male and female, who want to seriously pursue the field and make a career out of it by strengthening their drive and motivation.

There is already a paucity of female doctors in the field and the PMDC’s proposal would have only exacerbated this state of affairs. Admittedly, there is a problem of many females leaving the field once obtaining a medical degree without intending to ever practice and thus, this has resulted in fewer female doctors — and fewer physicians overall. What is needed, therefore, is the incentivisation of medical jobs so as to attract not only females with high aptitude, but also male students. The solution being proposed by the PMDC to address the shortage of qualified doctors through the setting of a gender quota at medical institutions will not do anything to improve the situation. This will only result in automatic induction of academically substandard students.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 5^th, 2014.

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