Now, Pakistan's medical and dental graduates who have graduated after March 2020 have to scan through NLE to start practising in their country.
Implementation of NLE
There is a growing number of private medical colleges operating without a thorough check by higher education authorities. This non-regulation has been letting their education standard go down. These colleges then produce a batch of doctors who are not ready to tackle the challenges of health services. So Pakistan Medical Council (PMC) proposed a countrywide competency exam to prove credibility. This is called the National Licensing Exam (NLE). PMC implemented this exam after several countries which hold similar exams.
NLE fees and syllabus
PMC conduct this exam after twice a year, with a fee of 12,000 for each attempt. This price seems absurdly high for an exam that is mandatory for every medical graduate. It seems more like an attempt to generate funds than to facilitate the students. Moreover, the NLE seems quite inconsistent with common sense. One reason is the syllabus is exceeding the syllabus of all five years of education.
The other thing is that things that happened after much planning have not been operating very well. At the same time, things done in haste have fared even worse. NLE creates hastiness because PMC has implemented it right after a year of its introduction. In contrast, the General Medical Council UK took almost seven years, fine-tuning the print.
Need to grasp the actual problem
There is a lack of standardized education in Pakistan. However, there is a need to correct the problem from the grassroots level. This is done by regulating the growing medical institutes. This eliminates the need for further exams like NLEs as the medical students have to give two more licensing for their postgraduate training. These qualifying exams then become a source of discouragement. The students have already given many exams before even attempting to gain some benefit from their profession. ‘Pakistan association of private medical Institutes’ had given strong thoughts on the implementation of this exam. They felt that this implementation was nothing more than an unnecessary attempt by PMC. They did this to dodge the lack of jobs and postgraduate training. Hence make the students stuck toiling in the exam with no end in sight.
