Medical students have come out against the National Exit Test (NEXT) for MBBS graduates proposed in the draft National Medical Commission Bill saying that assessing medical students on the basis of a three-hour long objective type examination was irrational and would adversely impact the medical education in the country.
Union health ministry last month says that MBBS students have to pass NEXT exam before they can start practising medicine as well as to get admission in postgraduate medical courses.
MBBS students from all the seven medical colleges in Malabar would take out a protest on Wednesday against the move. The protest is organised by the college union of the Kozhikode government medical college.Speaking at a press conference here on Tuesday, college union chairman Aakhil Nabuhan and vice chairperson Sreya Mariyam Salim said that the changes proposed in the bill would lead to greater commercialisation of medical education.
'It is impossible to assess the practical knowledge and skills acquired by a medical student who had completed 5.5 years of education and house surgeoncy just through a multiple choice question test. As the practical knowledge and skills are not assessed in the exam it would lead to students focusing just on acquiring theoretical knowledge. Also it could lead to artificial scarcity of doctors in the country,' Sreya said.
The proposal in the bill to scrap the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE) test for foreign medical graduates of Indian origin and grant them eligibility to practice in the country through NEXT examination was biased, they said.They said that students from all the medical colleges in Malabar would participate in the protest march to be taken from Mananchira to the Kozhikode Beach on Wednesday.
