A student should experience rural internships

Medical students want better infrastructure, safety and medicines to ensure they can help rural India
Give us extra credit for postings
We need better infrastructure in rural areas. Even basic necessities like needles and syringes are not available. I used my own needles when I was doing my internship in a place away near Virai. We don't mind going to villages because it serves a good cause. But women doctors have to deal with safety issues.

We are asked to go to tribal areas where even everyday things were not available. How do you expect doctors to operate there? In Karnataka, they get they get extra credit for working in rural areas. Even after post-graduation, at 32, we earn only Rs15,000 which is what a BCom graduate would earn in the first job. The only positive thing about rural internship is that it teaches you to operate in any environment; we learn things we never do in a city. We learn the use of simple remedies, or to avoid expensive antibiotics. 
—Dr Dharini Bhammar

Why only medical students?
The condition in rural areas is pathetic. Medical officers themselves are rarely around. Shouldn't engineers, lawyers, architects, CAs, dentists, and nurses too be doing a rural stint? We’re okay if they run away abroad for better prospects.

But doctors can’t avoid rural postings without inviting censure. The mandatory rural posting isn’t going to help our rural areas. We need more primary health care centers first. We study medicine to serve people but we aren’t even proper doctors yet. We are allowed to do minor procedures as interns and that too under the supervision of a senior doctor.

Every doctor needs a registration number and certificate given by the Medical Council of India (MCI) to practice. Without this number it is illegal to even treat a patient. Interns can’t be left alone to handle cases and that too in villages with bad facilities.
 —Kavita Rane. Intern at D Y Patil

We’ll spend all our life studying
I had the option of doing a rural internship but I preferred to pay the penalty, as I didn’t want to waste the entire year doing it. None of my friends did it either. Medical students spend so many years studying for the medical degree that they are unable to complete their education before 30. 

Before, there was a rule which expected students to do a rural internship but only if they chose to. Some years back, the rule existed, but it wasn’t compulsory. The sudden announcement of the two-year rural stint came as a shock to most students like me.

Why force us to work like that? If such compulsions persist, students will choose to study medicine abroad. Foreign universities don’t have any such rules. And this is the only way students won’t have to be forced to work in areas where basic facilities are missing. 
—Dr Nimisha K

City’s experienced doctors however believe that these internships are a must for every student

Make the internship shorter
It takes a very long time for a student to get a medical degree. If you add in a two-year rural internship, a student will turn 30 by the time he finishes education.

Students should be given the freedom to decide whether they want to go for a rural posting, go for a shorter term or not go at all.

A compulsory term in the villages is unfair. If you offer to let off a student who can pay a penalty then only the rich ones manage to evade the posting. This is unfair on middle-class students.

Or else, don't offer the students the option of a penalty. I am in favour of a common rule for all students. I was quite lucky because when I was studying medicine we had short-term rural internships and we were not desperate to evade them. So there wasn’t any problem then.
 —Dr Ajit P. Gynaecologist

Offer better living facilities
I completed my medical degree from Nair Hospital in 1979. In those days, rural postings lasted for six weeks. It is extremely important for a student to experience rural internships.

There are many pockets in India that desperately need medical facilities and good doctors. If a student gets to serve in a backward region, it’ll add to his/her experience. But students should be provided with basic facilities when they are sent for rural internship.

Often there is no decent accommodation—it could be a small, dirty hut. I was sent to Pali for my internship. My face was red with mosquito bites at the end of it. But I do feel that parents should avoid paying a penalty that frees their children from rural internships.  
—Dr Jamuna Pai. Dermatologist

Cities are more lucrative
Students opt out of rural assignments because medical facilities in villages are abysmal. Most students in the city's medical colleges are from Mumbai and feel they can’t adjust to the rural lifestyle. Even students who come from a rural background and reserved category prefer not to go to villages.

These students choose to intern in big city hospitals, under reputed doctors where they can make better money. I think rural assignments should be made compulsory. Students need to know that they cannot use money to buy their way out of every difficult situation.

I'm not saying that they should be sent to places which don't have even a decent clinic. The term of such postings can be reduced to say three months. This will allow students to use the rest of their internship to work at a desired centre.
 —Dr Jayesh Lele. Secretary, IMA