NEW DELHI: The National Medical Commission (NMC) has proposed significant changes to the eligibility criteria for teaching positions in medical colleges. According to the recent draft “Teachers Eligibility Qualifications (TEQ) in Medical Institutions Regulations,” non-teaching consultants, specialists, and medical officers with a postgraduate medical degree who have worked for a minimum of four years in a government hospital with at least 220 beds—whether teaching or non-teaching—can now qualify for positions as Assistant and Associate Professors.
This marks a relaxation from the 2022 norms, which required non-teaching doctors to work for two years in a 330-bedded non-teaching hospital that had been converted into a medical college to become eligible for an Assistant Professor role.
Join NEET News 2025 The draft regulations further specify that eligible candidates must complete the Basic Course in Biomedical Research (BCBR) before qualifying for these positions.
The NMC has released the draft regulations for public review and is seeking comments and feedback from stakeholders to finalize the changes.
Eligibility for assistant professor
The draft regulations state that diploma holders appointed as senior residents before June 8, 2017, and continuously working as senior residents in the same institute qualify for the post of Assistant Professor. Additionally, a senior consultant recognized as a PG teacher under NBEMS criteria and working or having worked as a PG teacher in a government medical institution running an NBEMS-recognized PG training program qualifies to become a professor in an NMC-recognized medical college in their specialty after completing three years of experience as a PG teacher.
The draft regulations clarify that only original papers, meta-analyses, systematic reviews, and case series published in journals indexed in Medline, PubMed, Central Science Citation Index, Science Citation Index Expanded, Embase, Scopus, and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DoAJ) will be considered.
The regulations also recognize faculty members in medical colleges or institutions with five years of teaching experience in their specialty as Assistant Professors or higher as postgraduate guides in that specialty. Faculty members with three years of teaching experience in their specialty as Assistant Professors or higher qualify as postgraduate guides in their super specialty subjects.
The draft regulations retain the two-year-old provision that allows non-medical graduates with MSc and PhD degrees to teach medical students anatomy, biochemistry, and physiology during a transitional period.
