Medical students will have to do more than complete a five-and-a-half-year-long medical course to use the ‘doctor’ title. The draft Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Bill 2016, unveiled by the Union health ministry on Thursday, said they will have to pass the National Exit Test (NEXT). The test is expected to create a level-playing field in medical education, increasingly becoming privatized.

A central government official said NEXT would improve the quality of medical education in the country and help benchmark students. “It will substitute three tests, including NEET for postgraduate admissions, recruitment for central health services and the foreign graduate medical examination,” said the official, adding it will be an outcome-based test. “The results of how students from individual colleges have performed in NEXT will be made public. If a college has over 90% students clearing the test, it will automatically act as an indicator. Students can make an informed choice while selecting colleges,” said the official.

Dr P Shingare, who heads the state’s department of medical education and research, said NEXT is a good move. “How can we equate a student from X university with one from Y University? NEXT will bring about standardisation,” he said. A professor said inspection by authorities can just rate the infrastructure of a college and only the outcome of NEXT can be a tangible parameter to determine the quality of that college.