UK Medical Licensing Assessment (UKMLA)

The GMC council has approved a plan which will see the GMC working with partners across the UK to develop a new medical licensing assessment.

This new assessment will replace the current professional linguistic assessment board (PLAB) test. Instead, all doctors seeking to practice medicine in the UK will be required to complete the new assessment, provisionally named the United Kingdom Medical Licensing Assessment (UKMLA).

Throughout 2015, the GMC will work with key partners and external advisers to develop this new assessment, the outcome of which will be a detailed model for how the assessment can be implemented going forward.

Plans for developing this work include:

• the assessment will apply to all UK and international medical graduates, with the aspiration that all doctors joining the medical register should complete it
• implementation would be no sooner than 2019 for international, and 2021 for UK medical graduates
• the UKMLA will fully replace the PLAB test currently taken by international graduates.

The GMC hopes to present a proposal model to the council by June 2016, and believes that introducing a single standard of entry to the UK medical register should give assurance on the competency and quality of doctors in the UK, regardless where they were trained.

As new information on the work plan is published, we will update this web page to reflect emerging changes, and any important news for employers concerning PLAB or the new assessment.

Information on this work plan can be found on the GMC website:http://www.gmc-uk.org/news/26549.asp