Only FSc electives’ marks to be considered for merit

Islamabad: The regulator for medical education has announced that the FSc examination marks in biology, physics, and chemistry subjects only will be used to calculate merit for next admissions to the medical and dental colleges.

“The National Medical and Dental Council has approved a policy to determine merit for the upcoming MBBS and BDS enrolments in line with the government’s policy. Only the marks obtained by students in the FSc exam science electives will be used for calculating the merit. This formula will apply to all students taking FSc exams in 2021 and those applying on the basis of either the last year’s FSc exam results or A-Level exam results to prevent discrimination in merit calculation,” a spokesman for the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) announced on Sunday.

According to him, the council, at the request of the federal education ministry also approved a special window from January 10 to February 10, 2021, for colleges to accommodate the students, who will take A Level examinations in October 2021 with the results expected in next February. “The specific methodology will be notified as an addendum to the PMC Medical and Dental Undergraduate Education (Admission, Curriculum, and Conduct) Regulation, 2021.”

The spokesman said the NMDC examined the accreditation standards recommended for teaching hospitals by the National Medical and Dental Academic Board and asked the board to review them taking into consideration that the accreditation and recognition standards for medical and dental colleges are developed separately.

He added that the Council would provide the NMDAB with guidelines to review the quantum of the clinical faculty in each discipline and certain standards.

According to him, the NMDC has in principle approved a phased approach towards the enforcement of new standards and decided that the colleges would be given reasonable time for compliance.

It also decided that the inspection score of educational institutions would be represented by four scored grades, including A+, A, B, and C, instead of the actual marks obtained to avoid any public assumption of ranking, which is otherwise the domain of the Higher Education Commission vis-à-vis university and colleges.

If a medical or dental college achieves grade C, the PMC will give it sufficient time to achieve new accreditation standards and obtain a higher grade within the prescribed time.

The NMDC, in order to cater to the need for inspection and accreditation of teaching hospitals for postgraduates and house jobs across the country decided to approve interim standards for the purpose.

“The interim standards will remain effective until the final standards are revised by the NMDAB. This emergency measure has been taken in view of the recent judgment of the Lahore High Court mandating that teaching hospitals must be accredited by PMC prior to initiating postgraduate training,” the spokesman said.

He said the Council also decided that the previous 2019 accreditation standards for undergraduate medical and dental colleges would be used for carrying out the immediate and urgent inspections in different cases.

The NMDC also examined the concerns of medical graduates about the scope and structure of the National Licensing Examination and said the NLE would be an examination principally to test the candidate’s ability to function as a ‘safe medical and dental practitioner’.

“The NLE is not designed to re-examine the graduate on the theoretical university professional exams.”

The PMC spokesman also said the NMDC ordered the posting of a sample NLE paper on the Internet within 10 days to allow graduates to clearly understand the scope and structure of the exam.