Perceptions and opinion of the medical students about the National Medical Commission Act: a cross sectional study from a medical college in North Kerala

Background: The National Medical Commission (NMC) Act, 2019 has come into force from August 2019 with the aim of addressing the shortcomings in the process of regulating medical colleges in the country and also in the wake of allegations of corruption against the 63-year-old Medical Council of India. However, it has been criticized for various reasons viz., it is over-centralized, it would lead to increased profiteering, corruption etc. In this context the present study was undertaken to find out the perceptions and opinion of the medical students about the NMC act.Methods: This was a cross-sectional study done at a Medical College, Wayanad District, between August-January 2019. All the undergraduate medical students of the college were the study subjects. Data was collected using a predesigned and pretested self-administered questionnaire. The subjects were asked to give response to questions pertaining to NMC on a Likert scale of 1 to 5. Completed responses were obtained from a total 655 students.Results: The subjects strongly agreed with the 6 limitations of the NMC (median score 1) and agreed with 9 (median score 2) out of the total 15 limitations. The number of subjects agreeing (agree and strongly agree) was highest [574 (88.3%)] for “NMC is over-centralized”.Conclusions: The subjects agreed (strongly agree+agree) to all the limitations of the NMC. There was no disagreement to any of the limitations.