"Can I Leave and Get My Certificates Back?" - The Question a Medical College Must Be Able to Answer

The Exit Should Never Be the Hardest Door to Open

Two postgraduate students at Andhra Medical College, Visakhapatnam, died within five days of each other. The police speak of exam pressure; one family spoke of a daughter unhappy in her specialty who wanted to go home. We should be honest about what we do not know. A suicide is almost never explained by a single cause and no rule can be said to have "caused" these deaths.

But there is one fact an ethics answer cannot step around. Officials say the first-year student had asked whether she could leave the course mid-way - and whether the college would give back her MBBS certificates.

Why that question matters She was not asking for a favour.

She was asking whether a door existed. The certificates in question were not the college's achievement; she had earned them elsewhere, years earlier. That a young doctor had to ask whether she could have them back tells us how exit works in much of India's postgraduate medical system:

• Seat-leaving bond
• a student who quits mid-course faces a financial penalty.
• Certificate retention
• the college holds her original credentials until the bond is settled.
• The result
• leaving is not a decision; it is a negotiation conducted from a position of total dependence. The National Medical Commission has already urged states to do away with the seat-leaving bond, precisely because it keeps distressed students trapped.

The easy answer and why it fails The easy answer is that bonds exist for a reason and that reason is real.

A postgraduate seat is scarce and publicly subsidised. A student who walks out mid-course leaves a seat that often cannot be refilled that year and a teaching hospital a resident short. A penalty discourages casual exits. All true - and still not a justification for holding a person's credentials as collateral. A mechanism built to protect seats has quietly become a mechanism that makes a student's own future hostage to her staying.

When the only exit is expensive and humiliating, a struggling resident may stop looking for the door at all.

What duty of care actually owes

1. A visible, dignified exit

• clear rules, a proportionate cost and certificates returned without condition.

1. Voice before exit

• the principal says neither student complained to seniors. That silence is itself a finding: residents rarely complain upward in a steep hierarchy. Confidential channels, independent of the department, are needed.

1. Care that reaches out

• exam failures, requests to transfer and repeated absences are signals. A college should treat them as prompts to check in, not as paperwork.

The resolution Scrap the punitive bond and end certificate retention, as the NMC has asked; replace them with a managed exit window and counselling that helps a student decide rather than traps her.

The cost is real

• some seats will fall vacant mid-course and some public investment will be lost. That is a price a humane system should pay willingly. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to the Tele-MANAS helpline at 14416 - it is free and available round the clock.