Panama’s Minister of Health, Fernando Boyd Galindo, has proposed that doctors who fail the country’s medical certification exam twice should be required to return to university to strengthen their training, arguing that it is unfair for the population to be treated by professionals who are not adequately prepared.
What Happened
The minister made the proposal on Wednesday, September 9, during his presentation of the Ministry of Health (Minsa) budget for the 2027 fiscal year before the Budget Commission of the National Assembly.
Boyd Galindo argued that doctors, beyond completing their university studies, must undergo an evaluation with a scoring system that determines whether they are truly prepared to practice. Under his proposal, those who fail the certification exam on two occasions should return to university for additional preparation.
“If they don’t pass it, let’s say twice, for example, they should go back to university to be trained again,” he said.
The proposal comes in the wake of troubling results from the first Basic Certification Exam in Medicine of 2026, which revealed a strikingly low pass rate among aspiring doctors seeking to enter medical internships in Panama. Only 11.31% of participants achieved the minimum score required to access the medical internship.
During his appearance before lawmakers, Boyd Galindo also proposed creating a standardized entrance exam for medical school that would be identical for all students, whether applying to public or private universities.
“I believe we need to implement an exam that is not currently being done, an entrance exam that must be the same for every student who wants to study medicine,” he said.
According to the minister, a standardized test would establish a common criterion for all aspiring medical students, regardless of the university they wish to attend. He added that such an exam would also help limit the number of students admitted to medical programs in line with the State’s capacity to meet their training needs.
Background
The Basic Certification Exam in Medicine was introduced as a mechanism to assess whether medical graduates are prepared to advance to the internship stage, the period of supervised clinical practice that follows university training and precedes full professional licensure. The 2026 results, with barely more than one in ten candidates reaching the required score, have raised serious questions about the quality of medical education in both public and private institutions across the country.
Currently, Panama’s medical education landscape includes universities with differing admission standards and training conditions. The absence of a unified entrance exam means that academic requirements for beginning medical studies can vary significantly depending on the institution.
Boyd Galindo framed both proposals as measures to guarantee the quality of medical training and protect patients. “It is not fair that the population is being attended by doctors who are not well trained,” he stated.
What This Means for Panama
Taken together, the two proposals would create filters at both ends of the medical education pipeline: one at the point of entry into medical school, regulating how many students begin the program and under what standardized criteria, and another at the transition to medical internship, evaluating whether candidates are genuinely prepared to continue their clinical formation.
If implemented, the reforms could reshape how Panama trains its future physicians, potentially reducing the number of underprepared graduates reaching hospitals and clinics. For aspiring doctors, it would mean facing a nationally uniform entrance standard and stricter consequences for failing certification.
The proposals also carry implications for the country’s universities, which would need to align their admission processes and academic programs with any new national requirements. The debate over the Minsa 2027 budget provides the legislative forum where these ideas will be discussed as lawmakers consider the ministry’s funding priorities for the coming fiscal year.
Observers of Panama’s health sector will be watching whether the National Assembly moves to formalize these exam requirements into law, and how medical schools respond to the pressure created by the low certification pass rates.
This story was originally reported by La Prensa.