{"id":186286,"date":"2018-01-11T00:00:52","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T18:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=186286"},"modified":"2018-01-15T12:10:43","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T06:40:43","slug":"saitm-students-had-no-psychiatry-or-community-medicine-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/saitm-students-had-no-psychiatry-or-community-medicine-training\/","title":{"rendered":"SAITM Students Had No Psychiatry Or Community Medicine Training"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Sankalpa+Marasinghe\">Sankalpa Marasinghe<\/a> &#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_158796\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Sankapala-Marasinghe-.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-158796\" class=\"size-full wp-image-158796\" src=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Sankapala-Marasinghe-.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"149\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Sankapala-Marasinghe-.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Sankapala-Marasinghe--50x50.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-158796\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr Sankalpa Marasinghe MD<\/p><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">On 30<span style=\"font-size: 13.3333px;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><span class=\"s1\">December, 2017, Minister Lakshman Kiriella was visibly jubilant to make a revelation in front of a set of graduates from Sri Lanka Institute of Advanced Technological Education (SLIATE). It was a statement embedded with sarcasm directed towards the students\u2019 movement which stood opposing the grand plan to establish a fraudulent institute and grant recognition.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Sri Lanka Medical Council (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=SLMC\">SLMC<\/a>) had agreed to recognize the medical degree awarded by the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=SAITM\">SAITM<\/a>) with more than five weeks of clinical training, said Minister Lakshman Kiriella.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hggKIbt-WM0?start=18\" width=\"900\" height=\"500\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI say this to you because you are young and you can be misled\u2026,\u201d the minister continued.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Nothing could be further from truth and there was only one person who was misleading the students of Sri Lanka Institute of Advanced Technological Education on that day, Minister Lakshman KIriella himself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\">The Sri Lanka Medical Council has denied such a decision and as far as this writer could confirm no such decision was made to date at the Council of the SLMC. In fact, as the Registrar of the SLMC had explained, the council has appointed a subcommittee to look in to the possibility of a \u201cbridging course\u201d in an eventuality of SLMC being directed by the court of law to register those students who had already completed the course at SAITM. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\">The Committee comprises of <\/span><span class=\"s1\">Prof Narada Warnasuriya (Chairman),\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Prof Rezvi Sheriff,\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Prof Harsha Seneviratne,\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Prof Jennifer Perera,\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Dr S Raviraj,\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Prof Sisira Siribaddana and\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Prof Nilanthi de Silva (Rapporteur).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">As far as it is known, this subcommittee has not produced a finalized report and the council has not agreed upon a final time frame for the possible bridging course.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><span class=\"s1\">On the above context comes the greatest revelation which for some strange reason was \u201chidden\u201d from many inquiries conducted by relevant authorities. The writer reliably learned that two of the essential clinical components for the completion of MBBS degree; Community medicine and Psychiatry\u2019 has not been completed by the students of SAITM.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><span class=\"s1\"> In a letter dated <\/span><span class=\"s1\">January 4, 2018, Registrar SLMC has inquired from the relevant Regional Director of Health Services, Dr S M Arnold whether the training of Community Medicine for the students of SAITM was adequate or not?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><span class=\"s1\">The response forwarded by the regional director is a written submission by the Additional Medical Officer of Health, Kaduwela which states as follows.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cA community Medicine Appointment was not conducted for the students of SAITM by the MOH office Kaduwela.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cNone of the medical officers of MOH Kaduwela were involved in providing any training on Community Medicine for SAITM students\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><span class=\"s1\">Therefore, those students of SAITM who claim that they have completed MBBS have not done a community medicine training.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><span class=\"s1\">It is also learned very reliably that Dr Vajira Dharmawardene, Consultant Psychiatrist, has also responded to the query by the SLMC and stated that the students of SAITM had not done a proper Psychiatric appointment at B H Avissawella. He further adds that there is no Psychiatric ward at B H Avissawella and hence the students had no exposure to inward patients.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><span class=\"s1\">This revelation comes in the midst of SLMC trying to work out how much of a deficit should be covered to close the gap of \u201cgrave inadequacy of clinical training\u201d of SAITM students who have supposedly completed their MBBS.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><span class=\"s1\">The subcommittee appointed by the SLMC to look in to the inadequacies of SAITM students in their clinical training has noted all these factors and will arrive at a probable time period of additional training if warranted. With the new revelation of entire clinical subjects being missed in the schedule the additional training required could span beyond two years.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":158796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>SAITM Students Had No Psychiatry Or Community Medicine Training - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/saitm-students-had-no-psychiatry-or-community-medicine-training\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SAITM Students Had No Psychiatry Or Community Medicine Training - 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