Toward Iraqi National Medical Licensing Examination

Abstract

Many factors that necessitate the need for a national medical licensing examination in Iraq, and these are the following; the rapid increase in the number of medical schools and their students, the expected influx of Iraqi and foreign medical graduates from foreign countries to work in Iraq especially after 2003. The expected increasing number of students and award of scholarships to increasing numbers of students to study medicine in various countries with the absence of published national guidelines for minimal acceptable competencies of a medical graduate are of driving forces for this examination. This article is to discuss the need for consensus of lists of competencies that a graduating medical student is expected to master in order to practice medicine, and then to design national licensing examinations to address these different competencies.