• The National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill was passed by both the houses of parliament last week. The NMC is set to replace the Medical Council of India (MCI), the regulator for medical education in the country, which once earned the infamous epithet of ‘den of corruption’ by the Delhi high court.
• The NEXT aims to ensure a minimum standard for MBBS graduates from the 541 government and private medical colleges. Drafted as the National Licensure Exam in the first draft of the NMC Bill, opposition for a separate licentiate exam made the Union cabinet decide in March 2018 to make the final year MBBS exam serve the purpose while also functioning to be the qualifying exam for medical postgraduate seats.
• Not just that, the NEXT is also proposed to replace the Foreign Medical Graduate Entrance Exam (FMGE), which allows MBBS students who graduated abroad to practice in India.
• In the current scheme of things, an MBBS graduate studies for 5.5 years and upon passing the final year exam, which tests theory and practical skills in four broad subjects (medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, and paediatrics) is able to register with a state medical council and be eligible to practice. However, the quality of a huge number of such graduates is poor and affects the healthcare delivery system.
• Any licensing exam to ensure the quality of MBBS graduates should check for knowledge, skills to treat non-complicated commonly encountered disease conditions and an attitude of empathy and propriety. If it is going to be the same final year MBBS examination as before, how NEXT will ensure these objectives is unknown.
• It gets trickier with NEXT being slated to serve as an entrance exam for medical postgraduate seats. Any entrance and in this case for a commodity in shortage, should provide a uniform playing field to all aspirants. It is very hard to fathom how the NMC intends to make the final year MBBS exam uniform across scores of universities and hundreds of medical colleges in this vast country.
• Apart from that, the utility of an exam that tests only a few of the many MBBS subjects and has a practical component which may have inherent bias built in, is questionable. What will happen to someone who fails to secure a postgraduate seat and wishes to take the exam again is another huge concern.
• While the intent of allowing Indian students who have completed an MBBS abroad to add to the healthcare workforce is welcome, NEXT being a licensing exam for them does not add up.