Created
15/01/22
Tags
#ukmla
Written by
Shehryar Khan
Reading time
2 min

How to make sense of the UKMLA

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The UK Medical Licensing Assessment (UKMLA) is a planned exam for all upcoming doctors, local and international, who wish to practice medicine in the UK. Currently UK medical school graduates do not have anything after the PSA and finals whilst international graduates must sit an exam called the Plab.

The UKMLA will be implemented for international graduates starting from 2024 and for UK graduates who graduate in 2025. Its intention is to standardise the entry level of doctors working in the UK as currently medical school finals vary significantly.

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How does it work?

Two parts will make up this exam:

  1. AKT - Applied Knowledge Test. 150-200 Single Best Answer questions selected by the medical school from a national question bank. They are looking for a way to integrate this into medical school exams but for now the plan is to have it as a separate assessment.
  2. CPSA - Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment. This will be similar to OSCEs.
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Both of these exams will be set by each individual medical school. The GMC acts as a governing body to ensure each medical school is appropriately assessing its students.

These documents designed for the AKT and CPSA show what minimum standards the GMC expect from medical schools when creating these assessments

How do I prepare?

The idea behind the exam is you shouldn't have to!

The GMC have informed medical schools to align their curriculums to cover the the MLA exams syllabus. Just preparing for finals as you normally would should be sufficient. Questions banks, just like for finals, are a valuable resource for the AKT. If you’d like a cheeky 20% off Quesmed, a popular question bank used by 100s of med-students, use our code: PAMSA20!

There is a content map, although this is aimed more for informing medical schools rather than medical students.

If you would like more information they have an email - mla@gmc-uk.org - and you should also message your medical school to ask about it!

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