LAUSR

India is home to around 554 medical colleges with an annual intake of more than 83,075 students who undertake undergraduate training in medicine [1]. However, only about 243 of these medical colleges have structured postgraduate psychiatry teaching that caters to about 1003 psychiatry postgraduates per year [1]. There are various streams of postgraduate training—Doctor of Medicine (MD), Diploma in psychological medicine, Diplomate of National Board— that are governed by different administrative bodies. The National Medical Commission (formerly known as the Medical Council of India) provides minimum required standards for postgraduate teaching centers, i.e., medical colleges, hospitals, and teaching institutes involved in postgraduate medical education. Postgraduate training in India lasts for 3 years, and the degree is awarded after a successful exit examination compared to a 4-year residency training in the United States of America [2]. The postgraduate curriculum includes 18 months of training under inpatient and outpatient adult psychiatry; 3 months each of consultation-liaison psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, and child and adolescent psychiatry; 2 months each of neurology, community psychiatry, and elective posting; and 1 month each of forensic psychiatry, clinical psychology, and emergency or internal medicine. These medical colleges, hospitals, and teaching institutes involved in postgraduate medical education follow conventional teaching methods, including bedside teaching, didactic lectures, seminars, and journal clubs [3]. Both the National Medical council and the Diplomate of the National Board have made research dissertations a mandatory requirement to complete the postgraduate psychiatry course. However, evaluation and examination are governed by the university with which the teaching institute is affiliated. These universities may either be state-level medical universities, regional universities, or deemed universities (universities that are given autonomous status and powers by the Government of India to decide courses offered, syllabus, fees, training, and examination). Teaching and evaluation standards may vary depending on many factors such as the availability of teaching staff, caseload at the teaching hospital, size of the department, and affiliated university. This variability is more considerable in certain training areas such as psychotherapy, community and rehabilitation psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, child psychiatry, and research training. Hence, postgraduate trainees in India need to come on to a common platform and supplement their training by a peerled learning process. Such a platform would allow equitable access to common learning resources, trainees from low resource centers to benefit from the experiences of others from better-privileged training centers, and opportunities * Girish N. Babu [email protected]