Government scraps screening test for foreign' doctors

New Delhi: There’s good news for Indian medical students who study abroad and want to practice in India.

The Centre has decided to do away with the mandatory screening test - the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE), a pre-requisite to start medical practice in India. Instead, these students will have to appear in the All-India Post-Graduate Entrance Exam (AIPEE), which will be a single entrance exam for those wanting to practice in India after earning an MBBS degree abroad and for those wanting to pursue post-graduate courses.

The AIPEE is expected to replace the FMGE by the next academic year. Senior government officials said that after introducing NEET (the single entrance test for students seeking MBBS degrees) from this year, the scrapping of FMGE was another attempt to help students who otherwise have to take multiple exams.

“The same exam, AIPEE, becomes an exam for both - those MBBS students who want to practice in India after studying abroad and those wanting to pursue PG courses. The benchmark remains the same. Earlier, these students had to clear a screening test and also take the PG exam to pursue post-graduate courses. The idea is to reduce the number of exams,” officials said.

A lot of students go abroad to study medicine. Those who have studied medicine in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are exempted from the screening test.