Huge employment opportunities in health care sector

In an effort to fill the acute shortage in the availability of manpower in the Coimbatore region, health care institutions in Coimbatore have joined hands with the Bharathiar University in offering health education courses from the new academic year.Industry veterans have warned that if the gap in the manpower requirements is not met, the region would face an acute shortage of para-medics and other hospital staff in the coming years.

Speaking to presspersons here, Dr K.S. Ramalingam, Convenor, Healthcare Panel, CII Coimbatore Zone, and Mr U.K. Ananthapadmanabhan, Chairman, Healthcare Sub-Committee, CII (SR), said there were around 5,000 hospital beds in the city alone and 5,000 more hospital beds in adjoining Erode, the Nilgiris and Salem districts. There are around 750 hospitals in the region and the health care industry has been witnessing an annual growth of around 20 per cent.With major industries such as L&T establishing their base in Coimbatore and with the establishment of the Tidel Park, there is an influx in the city population that would require more health care professionals.

But the hospitals are facing a near 40 per cent manpower shortage in different departments.One reason for the shortage of manpower was the lack of awareness about the employment opportunities available in the sector, other than for the doctors or nurses and how to qualify for the available jobs.Dr Ramalingam said under the CII's Industry-Institute partnership, the health care institutions had held parleys with the authorities of Bharathiar University, Avinashilingam University and Tamil Nadu Open University on the issue of designing courses to meet the manpower requirements in the health care field.These courses would be conducted by the hospitals themselves after securing approval from the universities.

The employees also have the opportunity to improve their qualifications even while working to fast-track their career progress.He said the process of launching approved courses had just begun in the city and he expected a total of 500-750 seats being offered by the hospitals in different courses from the coming academic year (2007-08).He did not find any wide variation in the salary levels in a particular job among the hospitals since it was `market-driven'.While the universities would provide the content and syllabus and would do the evaluation, the courses would be conducted by the hospitals and at least 10-15 hospitals would join this collaborative venture.

Asked whether the degrees or diplomas awarded by the universities would be recognised all over the country and whether there would not be any objection from organisations such as the Medical Council of India or the Indian Nursing Council or the Dr M.G.R. Medical University in Tamil Nadu, he said the Bharathiar University here had looked into the issue and was confident that it had the powers to award the degrees for these courses.

However, the Tamil Nadu Dr M.G.R. Medical University in its Web site states that `This is the only Medical University in Tamil Nadu capable of granting affiliation to new medical and paramedical colleges, government or self-financing; and awarding degrees (until 1988, all degrees of Health Sciences were awarded by the University of Madras).Besides medical and paramedical courses, the university also regulates dental education and education in the Indian systems of medicine under a single umbrella to maintain uniform and high standards. The university also promotes research.Mr K. Thangaraj, Chairman, CII, Coimbatore, said his organisation wanted to create awareness about the huge employment opportunities the health care sector offered. He said his organisation was also considering the issue of organising a job fair for health care sector.

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