National Consultation 2026

Understanding implementation before defining support.

A national academic consultation on how communication competency is taught, practiced, assessed, supported and tracked across undergraduate medical education.

Why this consultation?

Communication is a core competency in undergraduate medical education, but implementation can differ across colleges in protected teaching time, repeated practice, faculty capacity, assessment methods, feedback, remediation and longitudinal documentation.

The consultation is designed to map these differences, identify institutional, faculty and learner barriers, and understand the support medical colleges consider necessary for more consistent implementation.

What we are examining

Teaching

Where, when and how communication competency is taught.

Practice

Opportunities for repeated, scenario-based and clinically relevant practice.

Assessment & Feedback

How performance is observed, assessed, fed back and remediated.

Faculty & Systems

Faculty readiness, tracking, implementation barriers and support needs.

Consultation pathway

Listen → synthesize → deliberate → recommend.

01

Institutional responses

Capture teaching, assessment, faculty readiness, barriers and support needs from medical colleges.

02

Aggregate synthesis

Identify recurring patterns, variation and priority implementation questions without ranking institutions.

03

National consultation

Discuss interim findings with educators and institutions on September 20, 2026.

04

Recommendations & next steps

Translate institutional experience and evidence into practical academic recommendations and future priorities.

20 September 2026

National consultation

New Delhi + online participation

Interim findings from institutional responses will be presented for structured discussion with participating institutions and medical education stakeholders. The September consultation is a milestone in an ongoing process, not the final national analysis.

Safeguards: institutional findings are reported primarily in aggregate; colleges are not publicly ranked; participation is academic and voluntary; the consultation is not an NMC regulatory review.

Institutional participation

One coordinated response is invited from each medical college. Appropriate respondents include the Dean or Principal, Medical Education Unit coordinator, faculty responsible for communication training, or a nominated faculty member directly involved in undergraduate medical education.

Submit an institutional response