NMC: To intern in India, FMGs must appear for NExT Examination; Check major details inside

Foreign medical graduates (FMGs) must now pass the National Exit Test (NExT) and adhere to the requirements outlined in the Foreign Medical Graduates Regulations, 2021, in order to be provisionally registered for an internship with the relevant state medical council.

The National Medical Commission has informed the FMG community of its new policy. In order to be registered, students in Indian medical colleges must pass the admissions test for their schools. Foreign Medical Graduates Exam (FMGE) has been mostly replaced by NExT.

Graduates of the MBBS programme must complete a year-long internship in approved hospitals after completing their four and a half-year degree. Last month, NMC offered "one-time relaxation" to FMGs who successfully completed their internship in India. A list of approved non-teaching hospitals was supplied for the Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship (CRMI), which was authorised by the former Medical Council of India (MCI) for a year (up until May 2024) and was only for FMG interns.

NExT will function as a common final-year MBBS qualifying exam, a licence exam for the practise of contemporary medicine, a licence exam for merit-based postgraduate course entrance, and a screening exam for international medical graduates who wish to practise in India. It is anticipated that the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, will host NExT the following year.

In order to register with the NMR and practise in India, students must pay a processing fee to the NMC for the creation of Unique Identification (UID) numbers. The register will be kept up to date by the Ethics and Medical Registration Board (EMRB), and the NRM will be viewable by the general public on the NMC website. The license to practise medicine will be valid for 5 years.