Training foreign citizens for taking exams needed for verification of diplomas in the graduates' home countries – as one of the types of educational and methodological work and a component of the educational process at BSMU

Abstract

Introduction. The image of any education institution is formed by its graduates. The prestige of the higher education institution (HEI) itself depends on the success of young people who have graduated from it, on how far they can exercise the academic rights granted by the educational documents of their institutions, and whether they can get appropriate jobs.During the 6-year stage of undergraduate education foreign students studying at medical HEI of Ukraine, along with their Ukrainian fellow students, must take a series of unified state qualification exams that prove the level of their theoretical (USQE 1) and practical (USQE 2) training.But no less important for foreigners are examinations for verification of diplomas obtained from the Ukrainian HEI on their returning to the home country, the successful passing of which gives them the right to apply for postgraduate study and to start their own medical practice in their countries.Aim of the research. The aim of our research was to study the effectiveness of such type of educational and methodological work at the university as the training of foreign citizens for taking exams needed for verification of diplomas in the graduates’ home country (Republic of India).Methods and material. The study includes 1046 graduates of the Medical Faculty No. 3 of the Bukovinian State Medical University, natives of India, who successfully completed their studies during the years 2012-2021 and obtained diplomas in "General Medicine", with the educational and qualification level of "Specialist" (starting from the graduation year 2022 the programme subject area 222 "Medicine", degree of higher education - "Master’s Degree"). The subject of the study was the 1st attempt results of the above mentioned cohort of graduates on their returning to the home country and taking the state exam for the verification of the diplomas. The obtained results were processed by standard methods of variation statistics.Results. Starting from the academic year 2012-2013, the training course for the verification of diplomas by graduates from India was successfully launched on the university's distance learning server, and from the academic year 2013-2014 the control mode of the course was implemented; its passing was considered successful when the student solved more than 50% of the test tasks from the total of 300 test questions. Currently, this training course has about 25,000 test tasks from the main fields of theoretical and practical medicine. According to the received and processed data, when in 2011 only 12% of the graduates passed the MCI screening test on the first attempt, in 2015 this rate increased to 53%, and in 2018 reached 64.1%. This is one of the best results for the verification of diplomas of foreign medical graduates in India after their return to their home country from different countries of the world. Conclusions. Student-centred training courses significantly increase the effectiveness of the educational process when training foreign medical specialists. The implementation of the training courses for the MCI examination has made it possible to improve by several times the results of the verification of diplomas by BSMU graduates in their home country, the Republic of India.