‘Discrimination’: Nepal doctors outraged after US licensing exam invalidates their scores

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.

“Tagging Nepalis means that medical programmes are not going to consider your application because they don’t want to take the risk,” said Puja, whose scores for the last phase of the USMLE were invalidated. “I am certified and eligible to go into the programme, but now I’m unsure.”

The USMLE is a gruelling three-step exam, with each part entailing long hours of testing. A passing grade allows international medical school graduates to practice medicine in the US. Foreign test takers are required to get certified by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates in the US – which Puja had completed – after the second step, allowing them to take the third-step exam within a limited period of time.

The USMLE’s statement said the “anomalous exam performance” of the