Call for standard medical exam
A mainland medical expert has called for a national examination to standardise doctors' qualifications.
Mainland medical students should sit a public licensing examination authorised by the Ministry of Health before qualifying as practising physicians, Professor Shen Yucun, director of the Institute of Mental Health at Beijing University, said.
The call echoes a recent proposal being considered by mainland authorities to introduce a law requiring medical graduates to pass a universal licensing examination.
Doctors presently undergo training of varied standards.
One programme requires medical students to complete a four-year postgraduate course stringently regulated by the Ministry of Health after finishing a five-year undergraduate course.
Another asks for non-standardised four-year residential training in hospitals upon graduation in medical school.
The proposed public licensing examination would improve the standard of doctors trained under the less stringent programmes, Professor Shen said.
'It is better to have a national examination to unify the qualifications of doctors trained in residential programmes,' she said.
But she said any move to standardise qualifications could be hard to implement in remote areas due to a lack of teaching resources.
