DNB or MD/MS?

Over the past several years, many people have asked me whether they should join DNB or MD. Some days ago, one of my juniors in MBBS also called me up for advice – he wanted to join a DNB course in Nuclear Medicine, and he was apprehensive about the pass percentages after the three year course. I gave him a standard answer that I give almost anybody who asks me same question!

This incident gave me the idea to explore in my next blog. My thoughts here are good only for medicos in India. I have no idea what is the system elsewhere!

So here it is:

Doing an MD/MS is certainly better when

1. you get it in a single (or at most two) attempts at the PG entrance exams and
2. get it in an academically decent institution and
3. get the subject of your choice.

The biggest advantage that seems to be clearly visible to everyone is, the vast majority of guys doing an MD/MS clear their final exams in one go!

But how many people taking PG entrance exams satisfy all the three conditions above? I would say, only a handful!

Consider this –

Out of the thousands who appear for PG entrances, only a minority percentage qualifies in their first attempt. A first attempt could mean a preparation time for anywhere between a couple of months to a year. Another attempt could take the preparation time to two years!

Next, out of the minority who qualify in their first attempt, only a handful get into a good academic institution. The rest end up in places without enough facilities or patients or good teachers or good academic activities. Let us face it guys, even if you say that these type of institutes still produce good PGs, it is solely due to the hard work of the PGs; the institute doesn’t give them much! And most of such postgraduates do end up learning a lot of their subject during their senior residencies in better places, after completing their PGs. So, places which do not qualify as good institutes are as bad as places offering DNB but not qualifying as good institutes. Several of those joining these colleges do so because they have no other choice – not out of their own sweet will!!

Finally, a tiny miniscule of the people fall into the group that satisfy the above two conditions and also the third one – that is getting into a subject of their own choice!

The very vast majority either

1. doesn’t clear the PG entrances in its first attempt or
2. doesn’t get a good institution or
3. doesn’t get the subject of its choice!

So what is the scenario like for the vast majority?

The vast majority ends up toiling hard for two or more years, getting into a second hand college and compromises on its subject choice, settling down for the second or third choice!

What is the point that I want to make?

Well, let us take the instance of a regular PG entrance exam taker. He completes his internship, and then ends up preparing for the entrance exam on an average for 2 years, before he qualifies in any of them. All this time, he either works at a hospital part-time for a pittance, or doesn’t work or earn anything at all! For two years on an average he reads and re-reads all the subjects in medical science, many of which may not be relevant for the PG course he joins later. Then he finally clears an exam, but is still not happy as he couldn’t get the subject he wanted. He either decides to try again or join another subject, which was not there in his wish list earlier! He finishes the course in 3 years, finally. So now he is a postgraduate 5 years after his internship (average) in a subject he didn’t initially plan for, and likely from a college he hadn’t planned to join.

Compare with a person joining DNB. The DNB entrance is easy to clear – so our man gets through within 6 months. He gets to join in the subject of his choice – there are plenty available! Admitted, he may not get a good institution, but in most cases, the DNB institution cannot be worse than the MD/MS institution that he would have joined, if he had cleared his PG entrance. He spends three years in his DNB and then spends another two clearing the final exam. This is what people fear the most – not being able to clear the final exam in one attempt! I will come to it later. After his initial three years and before clearing DNB final exams, he studies only his own subject, and he works and earns in the meantime in his own specialty! So after 5 years he is a postgraduate, in a subject he wanted to, with the requisite work experience as well!

So, come on, let us list the relative strong points of DNB and MD/MS:

1. You spend about 5 years in both MD/MS and DNB (from start of preparation for entrance to clearing your final PG exam).
2. Out of those five years, 3 are spent in pursuing your course. In MD/MS, the other two years are spent in preparation for the entrances, with the subjects studied only distantly related to your postgraduate course activities or your job thereafter. In DNB, you spend the other two years preparing for the final exam of your own PG subject, which keeps making you better and better at theory till you pass!
3. In addition, the initial 2 years spent in preparation for MD/MS entrance are spent holed up in a library or a rented and shared apartment, sometimes shelling out money for the rent and for any coaching one might take. There are very few who can boast of getting through PG entrances while getting some work experience as well! On the other hand, the two extra years after a DNB course is usually spent working in the same specialty somewhere and gaining practical experience as well as earning some money.
4. You rarely get the subject of your choice in MD/MS, and if you do, you compromise on the college. You, more often than not, get a subject of your own choice in DNB, and the average DNB institution is never worse than the average MD/MS institution.
5. Getting through an MD/MS entrance is usually a fair and square game (not counting management quota donation seats and stray instances of question paper leaks). But with DNB, recommendations and connections work a lot along with donation/fees money.
6. The internal examiners in MD/MS know you very well! This, surely, is an advantage in your final exams. But the other side of the coin is that you might get to be at the receiving end of a long standing grudge from your examiner if you are not able to please him/her in all possible ways! In DNB, there is hardly any partiality as all the candidates are unknown to the examiners. Only your depth of knowledge of the subject and good luck count. The examination itself is considered more uniform all over the country as the candidates never know what possible cases might come in their exam, unlike in MD/MS. The downside of this is it takes a lot more to convince the examiner that you are good at your subject!

There can be a few more minor points in and out of favor of either DNB or MD/MS. But finally, if you ask me for my opinion, I think DNB is worth everyone’s try and in most cases joining a DNB program available at hand scores over further attempts at PG entrances!

BHAAGAM BHAAG

Bhagam bhaag starts off with a bang! Great comedy fills up the space in the first half. Almost the entire team of comedians does justice to the script, although Govinda appears to be in the same form as Tendulkar nowadays. He is just not able to deliver his lines in his impeccable style of yesteryears!

Akshay Kumar is good, but shows no difference in the type of role or acting from several of his films in a row, that have him doing comedy. Very monotonous, but still quite enjoyable, is how we can rate him.

The problem with the movie comes in the second half, where the comedy shapes up into a murder mystery. It takes you through just too many twists and turns before revealing the climax, which is a complete anticlimax (KLPD)!

Although the comedians have done their duty well, the non-comedians have performed as if they never wanted to work in the film. Can’t blame them entirely too – the script itself was very poor! Lara Dutta, Jackie Shroff, and Arbaaz Khan, all lack any shine at all. Their animations could have done better!

There was hardly any music there to take back home. ‘Afreen’ does have some good choreography, though.

To sum up, Bhaagam Bhaag will stay in your memory for some time, thanks to the comedy in its first half. But the enthusiasm in the film ebbs down rapidly in the second half. Had the film been made an entire comedy, or the mystery in the second half also handled as comedy, it would have been a watch worth twice! But now, it’s been reduced to a good entertainer for people who are in the habit of leaving the hall in the middle of a film – here interval is the point to leave!

RISK

In the first look, RISK appears to be another of the underworld genre of movies that Ram Gopal Verma springs out of his hat every other year. On scratching beneath the surface, we find the depiction of civilian casualties during warfare. Only, the director has chosen to put a cop’s conscience in place of an innocent bystander.

To start with, let us have an overview of the story. A devoted inspector becomes overzealous in his attempts at cleaning the society of its filth - criminals. That is his job and he tries his best to do it. In the process, he ends up shooting a couple of innocent guys, mistaking them to be the goons he was after. He insists they weren’t all that innocent.! Whatever, he is forced to take an underworld kingpin’s help to get out of the mess he got himself into.

That is the main highlight of the story. There were civilian casualties in this war as in any other. The victim of note here is the inspector’s soul! This man finds himself killing his soul and siding with the very scum of the society that he had set out to clean! As he himself remarks in the movie - he died that very day when he accepted help from the don.

The acting in the movie is intense, with little show of emotions, but no dearth of religious beliefs, especially among the big goons! The dons in the movie appear to be very devout at home, irrespective of the fact that their professions performed exactly opposite of what religion teaches! It makes us wonder whether they have God’s blessings in their prosperity in their fields or their intense devotion to God is an attempt towards cleansing their souls of the dirt that they accumulate in their daily lives!

One can very well say the movie doesn’t have any female actresses - whoever is there is meant to just fill in the gaps. The reins of the story lie solely in the hands of the male actors. The reins of the story lie in the guns they hold.

Overall, the movie holds on to you till the end by virtue of the intensity of its scenes. A nice watch, but don’t expect a standing-ovation material.