‘Discrimination’: Nepal doctors outraged after US licensing exam invalidates their scores
- As many as hundreds of doctors who took a US licensing exam got their scores invalidated because of ‘anomalous exam performance associated with Nepal’
- Nepal doctors have slammed the examiners for linking the country with cheating, saying it unfairly casts doubt over their years of training
Last month, a Nepali doctor who had invested years of effort into taking a licensing exam that would allow her to join a medical programme in the United States was devastated to receive an email saying her test score had been invalidated.
Puja, who asked to use a pseudonym due to the sensitive nature of the issue, is one of a number of Nepali students who received similar emails from the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE).
On January 31, the administrators of the USMLE said they had invalidated some test scores after identifying “a pattern of anomalous exam performance associated with Nepal”.
The US non-profit Federation of State Medical Boards, which co-sponsors the USMLE, did not respond to This Week in Asia’s emails and phone calls for comment.
Doctors in Nepal like Puja, and those already working in the US, said the decision discredited Nepali medical practitioners and cast doubt on their years of hard work spent preparing for the exams.
