IGNOU MMEL 104 Practical for PGDGM: Basic Geriatrics Log Book, Marks and Exam

IGNOU MMEL 104 Practical in PGDGM: the course in plain terms

The IGNOU MMEL 104 Practical is Basic Geriatrics Practical, a 6-credit compulsory course of the Post Graduate Diploma in Geriatric Medicine (PGDGM), the one-year SOHS programme for MBBS doctors who have finished internship. It runs beside the MME-104 Basic Geriatrics theory course and carries no assignment of its own.

The study material is two practical manual blocks (April 2023) and a log book. Block 1 covers geriatric history, examination, health education and counselling; Block 2 covers community demography, nutrition, diet, ethics and visits to old age homes and day care centres. The sections below follow the order in which a PGDGM doctor meets each step.

Across practical courses, the record and the exam worry people far more than the theory papers, and learners who sail through written exams still stall at this stage. For MMEL-104 the weight is real: 6 of the 22 PGDGM practical credits, with its own pass line in each half.

Some learners only discover the practical side of a course when the session is half over. In PGDGM the log book arrives with the manuals, and the first contact spell is joined to the induction meeting, so MMEL-104 work starts in the first spell.

Rs 500, Rs 250 or no fee? The MMEL-104 fee and the 30 November 2026 date

For the IGNOU MMEL 104 Practical, the fee is the one item with a hard date this month. A notice of IGNOU’s Student Evaluation Division (SED) dated 18 September 2026 announced that online payment of the practical course fee for the December 2026 term-end examination has opened, through each learner’s Samarth Portal login, and it says no fee will be accepted after 30 November 2026. The documents do not agree on the amount, so read the three lines together.

MMEL-104 carries 6 credits, so under the prospectus rule it falls in the above-4-credit slab. The amount your Samarth account shows is the one to pay; if it differs from the slab, ask your PIC before the date passes, because the prospectus also says an examination fee once paid is not refunded.

Our records show 70 to 80 percent of learners moving only in the final month before a date. For a PGDGM doctor that month is November, and SED’s notice calls 30 November 2026 the last date for the MMEL-104 practical fee.

A belief we hear often is that IGNOU will push each last date back by a month. The December 2026 notice for practical course fees states plainly that no fee is accepted after the stipulated deadline, so treat the MMEL-104 date as fixed.

Learners often mix up the Rs 300 and Rs 500 practical fee figures in the prospectus. The figure follows the credits of the course, and MMEL-104, at 6 credits, sits in the higher band, not the up-to-4-credit one.

How the 50 internal marks are built: two contact spells and online sessions

Internal assessment in the IGNOU MMEL 104 Practical comes from four parts, each evaluated by your PSC/LSC counsellor under the January 2024 guide: online asynchronous sessions (20 percent, assessed through Google questionnaires), the first face-to-face contact (20 percent), online synchronous sessions (40 percent) and the second face-to-face contact (20 percent). The prospectus adds that some PGDGM counselling runs by web conferencing and some face to face at the Learner Support Centre.

The guide divides contact into two spells at the Learner Support Centre, a medical college or hospital identified by IGNOU. The first is clubbed with the induction meeting; the tentative windows are May to June and September to October, and no day count is printed. The guide makes each spell compulsory and asks you to attend them in sequence. If you will miss one, tell the Programme Coordinator and the PIC in advance and ask for an alternate spell, usually arranged zonally; otherwise you join the next batch.

Two points in the guide need care. Its evaluation table prints the internal pass as 25 of 50, while its text says 15 marks; plan for 25. Passing the internal half is a condition for sitting the term-end practical, and a learner who fails it repeats the practical activities after paying a fee equal to the readmission fee for practical courses. The guide also says no community medicine activity is set at Skill Development Centre level, so clear your MMEL-104 doubts before you leave the PSC/LSC.

Most of the learners we serve juggle a job, a family or both, and a missed practical session is where many of them lose a full cycle. In MMEL-104 that is literal: the guide lists attending the PSC/LSC spells and online sessions among the conditions for the term-end practical.

Practical days tend to be fixed, long and sometimes far from home, and learners who do not watch their centre’s notices miss a slot and wait a cycle. For PGDGM spells, the guide’s own windows are only tentative, so keep checking with your Learner Support Centre.

Advice from a friend at another centre often turns out not to match one’s own centre. For MMEL-104 the guide sets the marks split and the exam pattern for the whole country, while spell dates and online timings come from your own LSC; the prospectus also says the allotted LSC is final.

What the MMEL 104 Basic Geriatrics Practical blocks ask you to do

The MMEL 104 Basic Geriatrics Practical manual is written for a doctor working in the community. Block 1 assumes you have read MME-104, the Basic Geriatrics theory course; one passage in Unit 3 refers to MME-004, a course code the manual does not explain. The table maps each unit to what you practise and the tools or formats the manual names.

Where a practical runs on scored instruments, we see slips in scoring, the wrong cut-off table and conclusions the numbers do not support. MMEL-104 Block 1 Unit 2 alone names many scored screens, so total each one in the log book and write the interpretation beside the score.

Practical write-ups usually follow a set order, and a missing part costs marks. For the MMEL-104 health education session, the manual’s own order is the pre-listening activity, the post-listening discussion, the profile of participants and the supporting material.

Learners often hold three formats at once: the handbook’s, the counsellor’s and an online sample. For MMEL-104, go by the practical manual, the PGDGM log book and what your PSC/LSC counsellor signs.

The log book decides whether an activity counts

In the IGNOU MMEL 104 Practical the log book carries the internal assessment. The January 2024 guide calls it the record of the activities and cases you perform, asks you to write each case then and there and get it countersigned by the counsellor, and says an activity that is not duly signed is not considered for internal assessment. You carry the log book to each PSC/LSC spell and to workplace practice, and you bring it to the term-end practical for verification; it is returned afterwards. Data from an old age home or day care centre visit go into the log book and are signed before the spell ends.

• Fill in the columns printed in your log book; where it allows, record the setting and the patient’s age and sex rather than the name.
• Record the tool, the raw score and your reading of it for each screen used.
• Get the countersignature in the same spell, while the counsellor remembers the case.
• Keep a phone photo of each signed page in case the book is lost.

The record is where most practical marks slip away, and it is also the part a learner can fix fastest. For MMEL-104 that is plain from the guide: an unsigned entry earns nothing in the 50 internal marks.

A run of entries that only say “examined the patient” reads as attendance, not skill. A stronger MMEL-104 entry ties the visit to a manual concept: which geriatric syndrome you screened for, the tool, the result and the advice that followed.

Logs filled in one evening at the end give themselves away through repeated lines and dates that fall on holidays. The PGDGM guide’s instruction to record each case at the time, with a counsellor’s countersignature, closes that route for MMEL-104.

Block 2 community exercises and institutional visits

Block 2 Unit 1 sets eight exercises and asks you to do at least one; with your supervisor’s permission you may attempt one more with other students or doctors in your facility. The eight are: an epidemiological profile of the elderly in your community; the health system’s preparedness for the epidemiological transition; gender and ageing; public spaces and access for older persons; family and the elderly; palliative care; care of older persons in disasters; and preventive health care. Most ask you to collect data or map services, and several end in a note, plan or checklist. Unit 5 then prepares you for a visit to an old age home or a day care centre, which the guide says may be arranged as a field visit in MMEL-104.

The guide also expects practice at your own workplace between spells, recorded in the log book, which suits a PGDGM doctor posted at a PHC, CHC or district hospital.

Some learners describe data they did not collect. For the MMEL-104 community exercise, the figures have to come from your own work by the methods the manual lists, such as a questionnaire, NPHCE records, a group discussion or ASHA workers, because the counsellor signs what you report and the exam may ask how you got it.

Working professionals often ask whether practice at their own workplace counts. For MMEL-104 the guide expects skill practice at your own workplace between spells and asks you to record it in the log book, while the spells themselves stay at your LSC.

Why the log book has to hold your own patients and families

We do not write log books, health education reports or community notes for anyone, and we sell no MMEL-104 record. The guide’s Certificate of Completion of Practical Skills, signed for MMEL-104 by your PSC/LSC counsellor, carries a declaration that results may be held invalid if the information is later found to be wrong.

Ready-made practical records circulate online, and some learners hand them in after swapping in their own name and enrolment number. In MMEL-104 that collapses at the viva and the family work-up, where you have to explain your own work.

We also see write-ups produced by an AI tool and submitted unchanged, which is one reason the same wording turns up from several learners. A health education report for MMEL-104 should describe your own group of 5 to 10 older people and what they said.

IGNOU MMEL 104 Practical exam: family work-up, spots and viva

The IGNOU MMEL 104 Practical term-end examination carries the other 50 marks. The January 2024 guide says the practical term-end is usually held once a year, in November to December, at your Learner Support Centre, on a date set by the Coordinator or Programme In-charge. The pattern is uniform across the country: long and short cases, slides or spots, and a viva, except that in MMEL-104 the case is replaced by working up a family and its management problems. Spots can include spot diagnosis, specimens, X-rays, instruments, statistical exercises, charts, small management problems and graphs.

For the three PGDGM practical courses the guide names three external examiners (community medicine, orthopaedics and medicine) and four internal examiners from your own centre; an observer from IGNOU may attend. The guide sets a minimum of 50 percent in each practical course for clearing it. To sit the exam you attend the spells and online sessions with a signed completion certificate, submit the practical form (Appendix II) to your PIC, pay the fee on time and pass the internal half. Appearing in the MME-104 theory paper is not a condition. Carry your IGNOU ID card and the log book.

Learners often ask us whether their practical includes a viva. For MMEL-104 the guide is clear that it does, inside the term-end practical, alongside the family work-up and the spots.

A neat record can still score badly when the doctor cannot explain the method or findings at the viva, and those who did their own work answer with the most ease. For MMEL-104, expect questions on the family you assessed and the tools in your log book.

An unsigned counsellor certificate is a gap we notice in practical records. For MMEL-104 the completion certificate needs the PSC/LSC counsellor’s signature before the exam, so collect it at the last spell.

MMEL-104 questions: status, result, assignment and theory

MME-104 theory reading in our store

MMEL-104 has no question paper and no product in our store; the practical is learned at your LSC. What we do stock is reading for the theory course it pairs with, since the manual assumes you know MME-104.

Practical and internship pages for other programmes sit under our IGNOU practical and internship section.

Before the IGNOU MMEL 104 Practical exam: a short list

With the IGNOU MMEL 104 Practical term-end usually set for November to December, these checks fit the weeks before it.

• Check your Samarth account for the practical course fee and pay by 30 November 2026.
• Confirm with your PIC that your practical form (Appendix II) has reached the LSC.
• Count the countersigned pages in your log book against the units you covered.
• Get the Certificate of Completion of Practical Skills signed by your PSC/LSC counsellor.
• Rehearse a family work-up end to end: history, function scores, caregiver stress and a management plan.
• Revise the screening tools you used, with their cut-offs, for the spots and the viva.

Three causes sit behind most practical trouble we see: news that arrives late and differs by centre, demands on time and presence that working learners struggle to meet, and a record treated as paperwork. MMEL-104 has each of these, from tentative spell dates to the countersignature rule.

Learners who finish smoothly begin early, confirm details with their own LSC, write each case on the day, collect signatures within the spell and can explain each entry themselves. Those habits suit the MMEL-104 log book exactly.

The IGNOU MMEL 104 Practical rewards steady, signed work across the year more than last-week effort, and the log book is the proof of that work.

shrichakradhar.com is an independent publisher and is not affiliated with, authorised by or endorsed by IGNOU. Our guess papers are study reference material, not for submission as your own work, and the MMEL-104 log book and reports must be your own.