As NExT deadline looms, lack of clarity keeps students tensed

New Delhi: The National Medical Commission has less than a month to take a final call on the feasibility to conduct the NExT exam for final MBBS students in 2023 amid uncertainty among aspirants over the syllabus, pattern of the examination and its timing.

Under the National Medical Commission (NMC) Act, the Commission has to conduct a common final year undergraduate medical examination, which will be called as National Exit Test (NExT) within three years of it coming into force.

The NExT will serve as a common qualifying final year MBBS exam, a licentiate exam to practice modern medicine and for merit-based admission to postgraduate courses and a bridging exam for foreign medical graduates who want to practice in India.

The Federation of Resident Doctors' Association (FORDA) recently wrote to the NMC seeking clarity on holding the National Exit Test.

Meanwhile, the Union health ministry is also learnt to have sought NMC's view immediately on the feasibility of conducting the exam while informing it that if preparations are not in place, then extending the timeline for holding the exam in 2024 would require invoking provisions of the Act by September 24, 2022.

Sources highlighted that generally, NEET-PG is conducted around April or May every year and as NExT is supposed to replace it and so the exam should be conducted in the month of April or May which could be the earliest in 2023.

But conducting the exam requires preparations such as working out the modalities and deciding on the syllabus, type and pattern of the exam on whether it will be an analytical or a multiple choice questions-based test and number of tests and requisite regulations etc, they said, adding students will also have to given adequate time to prepare for the new exam.

Mock tests would need to be also carried out before the main test is held. Besides, it also needs to be decided on which agency will conduct the exam.