By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Sept. 9: Nepal Medical Council (NMC) takes license exams for MBBS and BDS graduates three times a year and provides the certificate to practise medicine legally to those who get through the exams. However, the pass percentage over the years has been far from satisfactory.
In the recent examination, suspended in March due to COVID-19, NMC conducted on Saturday in different parts of the country, 1047 candidates - 785 for medical and 262 for dental, had appeared for the license.
“The exam suspended in March was rescheduled for Saturday and was conducted in different exam centres across the country since many candidates were outside the Kathmandu Valley and the country is in strict lockdown,” said Dr. Krishna Prasad Adhikari, registrar at NMC.
According to the notice published by the Council on Monday, 358 candidates (46 per cent) for medical and 159 candidates (61 per cent) for dental passed the examination.
Over the years, the pass percentage of the candidates appearing in the exam has not been satisfactory. In the examination conducted in August, 2018, over 71 per cent of doctors and dentists had failed the examinations. The results of the latest license examinations also revealed similar trend--high rate of failure.
As per the officials at the council and statistics of the results, more graduates from foreign countries fail the examinations than those from the colleges within the country.
Since the students returning from the foreign countries have been failing the examinations with many private medical colleges providing poor education, the government has started providing No Objection Certificate (NOC) only to the students applying for medical colleges with clean-sheet in Bangladesh.
The Embassy of Nepal in Bangladesh had suggested the authorities in Nepal that it not provide NOC to the students applying for whichever medical colleges they wished to.
“Colleges in Bangladesh used to shut down in the middle while some used to operate for uncertain period with a stay order from the court. Nepali students used to face many problems since many would have been admitted in such colleges. But now Nepali students are allowed to apply only to colleges with clean-sheet,” said Adhikari.
While the rate of students failing the examination is high, they are allowed to seat in the next examination and continue until they pass. Officials at NMC said that there were high number of repeaters in the examinations.
In August, 2018, then senior officials at the council had said that there were some students appearing in the exam for more than 30 times.
“Our job is to take the examinations and issue legal certificate to the successful candidates; we are uncertain why so many students fail it. We expect the graduates to pass the examination as well and provide quality service to the people,” Adhikari added.