A senior government official has stated that beginning the following academic year, the National Exit (NExT) examination will be used as the uniform criterion for admission to medical colleges in the final year of undergraduate courses, the standard for merit-based postgraduate seat allocation, and the screening mechanism for foreign medical graduates seeking permitting to practice in India. These shifts will occur throughout India.
“The final choice will be made after the Exit exam, which will take place in 2024. The official who was quoted above, who preferred to remain unnamed, said that the right preparations would be made.
According to a report from HT that was published one month ago, the Indian medical education authorities would be given the completed NExT examination rules at a conference that will take place at the beginning of June.
The two parts of the examination that are planned to be given are-
- The NExT 1, which will be theoretical, and
- The NExT 2, which will be a practical, clinical, and oral examination comprising seven clinical areas or disciplines.
Both parts of the examination are expected to be given.
In addition to the national eligibility cum entrance test (NEET), the National Exit Examination (NExT) will also be applied to colleges of national importance like the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), with the goal of establishing a common standard for medical education throughout the country.
“The importance of the NExT lies in the fact that it will be the same for everyone, whether trained in India or any part of the world,” India’s Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said in a statement from the previous year. “Therefore, it will solve the problem of foreign medical graduates (FMGs) and mutual recognition.”
“During the course of this academic year, approval was granted for an extra 8,195 undergraduate seats to be made available across a total of 50 new medical colleges that had applied for and been granted permission to provide undergraduate degree courses. According to the first source cited in the previous sentence, there are now 1,07,658 MBBS seats available in Indian medical colleges.