About 40 percent medical doctors, who sat for the special examination conducted by the Nepal Medical Council on Saturday, have failed to score the pass mark.

Doctors have to pass the council’s special examination to practice as a specialist or consultant and should get 50 percent marks to get the specialist certificate.

Of the 268 doctors who took the examination, 146 have failed to obtain the pass mark.

“They passed the university exam but failed in the council’s test,” said Dr Dharmakanta Baskota, chairman of the council, pointing at some serious flaws somewhere. “Universities should contemplate and try to address the shortcomings.”

The council had constituted an expert panel comprising professors from the Institute of Medicine, BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Patan Academy of Health Sciences and Kathmandu University to prepare the questions and conducted the exam.

Experts said if the doctors with MD/MS (Doctor of Medicine/Master of Surgery) degrees fail in the council exam then it means they lack skill and basic knowledge to be a specialist.

A source at the council said 62 percent of doctors who had pursued MD on internal medicine failed to score the pass mark.

“The majority of those who could not pass the council’s test had pursued higher education at foreign universities,” said Dr Dilip Sharma, registrar at the council. “The majority of them had done MD on internal medicine and radiology.”

The council has recommended that the Education Ministry allow students to pursue medicine in foreign universities in the local languages of the respective countries, after huge numbers of students could not pass the NMC test.

Doctors can attend the special exam three times in a year.

Professor Jagdish Prasad Agrawal, dean at the Institute of Medicine, said that the fail percentage in the council’s special examination indicates poor quality and skill of doctors.  

“It is high time we started discussion to find out where we—or the doctors taking the exam for that matter—are lacking,” Dr Agrawal told the Post. “This is serious and should not be ignored as it is directly related to human lives.”

Medical students after completing their MBBS have to pass the Nepal Medical Council test to get a licence to practice medicine and those who have completed MD/MS have to pass the council’s special exam to get a licence to work as specialists.