The Long and Winding Road

Day by day the competition get tougher, the exams harder and the textbooks larger. Indeed, it is a long and winding road for the high school graduate seeking university admission to study medicine. The graduate desiring to excel must prepare to travel a tortuous path laden with obstacles. In Iran, in order to obtain admission to medical school one must place approximately among 3622 of the 442,000 or so participants in the Annual Nation-wide Medical University Entrance Exam (1). If accepted, the 18 year-old high school graduate must then complete 7 years of medical school to get a doctorate degree in medicine (MD). The general practitioner (GP) then 25 years-old must compete again to get accepted in the Annual National Residency Exam in order to pursue a medical specialty. Pursuit of a specialty is essential because the large cities of the country now have a surplus of GPs; and more patients opt to refer to a specialist for their ills rather than to a GP