Undergraduate medical students' research in India.

In India, medical education has remained more or less static, and research is in a very poor state. Against this backdrop, the idea of promoting research culture at the undergraduate level may look very unrealistic. Yet, as discussed below, there is a silver lining. Students seeking admission to medical colleges are extraordinarily bright. A fair number of them have also shown research aptitude. This was evident from the popularity of the Short Term Studentship (STS) program of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The program enables recipients to undertake research for two months and the students receive a token amount and a certificate on submission of a project report. The enthusiasm exhibited by the delegates of the two National Medical Students' Research Conferences held in Pune under the banner of the Moving Academy of Medicine and Biomedicine in October 2006 and February 2008 is yet another case in point. Students' presentations were of high quality, and their motivation for research could be judged by the fact that they not only passed a resolution for converting this initiative into an annual feature but also decided to form an " Indian Forum for Medical Students' Research ". This is a historic development in medical sciences in India. This editorial gives a bird's eye view of the current status of undergraduate medical research and discusses the steps that need to be taken to promote research at the grass root level. At the time of independence in 1947 India had just 20 medical colleges admitting about 3000 students. Sixty years later the number of colleges has increased 13-fold and the number of seats has reached to 30,000. [1] Despite the numbers quality still remains a major issue. Majority of colleges lack even the minimum infrastructure. Teaching is mostly didactic with little emphasis on practical knowledge or patient care. The concept of evidence based medicine is almost nonexistent in the majority of colleges. [2] This dismal state is no different than that was prevalent in the medical schools in USA at the turn of 20 th Century that resulted in appointment of the one-man commission of Dr. Abraham Flexner. Implementation of his report resulted in the closure of 60% of the medical schools between 1910 and 1935. This poor state of medical education has adversely affected research, the mother of new knowledge. Medical research, which on paper is an integral part of medical education, …