DHA Exam After MBBS in Europe: The Dubai Licence Route

The DHA exam is the licensing test the Dubai Health Authority sets before you can treat patients in Dubai, and a European medical degree does not get you out of it. That is the sentence most Indian families never hear before they pick a country. Your degree from Prague, Budapest or Riga is perfectly acceptable for licensing in the UAE. Acceptable and exempt are two different things. Here is what Dubai actually asks for, what the paper looks like, and how Saudi Arabia and Qatar differ.

Key Takeaways

• Every non Emirati doctor has to sit the DHA exam or the equivalent assessment at another UAE regulator. The unified Professional Qualification Requirements exempt only UAE nationals and children of Emirati women.
• The General Practice paper is 150 multiple choice questions in 3 hours, costs USD 280, and you need 60 percent to pass. It runs through Prometric test centres, so you can sit it in India.
• No European medical degree appears on the DHA exam exemption list for the general practitioner title. Only the Australian, Canadian, Irish, New Zealand, UK and US routes, plus the UAE's own residency entrance exam, buy you an exemption.
• You cannot apply the day you graduate. Dubai wants a 12 month internship plus 2 years of clinical experience after it, and a valid licence or registration in your home country or your country of last employment.
• You get 3 attempts at the DHA exam across the UAE authorities. Fail the third and the licensing manual blocks you from reapplying for 2 years.
• Qatar is stricter for a full general practitioner post (5 years of experience for overseas applicants) but keeps a supervised GP category that needs none. Saudi Arabia asks non Saudis for at least one year.

What is the DHA exam?

The DHA exam is the computer based licensing assessment run by the Dubai Health Authority to check that a doctor trained outside the UAE can practise safely in Dubai. It is a multiple choice paper, marked pass or fail, and you sit it after your documents have been verified. Your score is never published to you.

The assessment is delivered by Prometric, the same testing company Indian students meet for other international exams, through a network of 8,000 test centres in more than 160 countries. You do not have to fly to Dubai to take it. That matters if you are finishing a degree in Europe and want to line up options before you graduate.

Two things get confused constantly, so let's separate them now. Registration is the DHA's decision that you are qualified. A licence is what lets you work, and it only becomes active once a Dubai health facility employs you. The DHA exam sits between the two.

Does a European MBBS exempt you from the DHA exam?

No. The UAE publishes a list of international exams and registrations that replace the licensing assessment for the general practitioner title, and not one EU medical degree is on it. A six year programme in Czechia, Hungary, Poland or Latvia qualifies you to apply. It does not qualify you to skip the DHA exam.

Here is the full exemption list for the general practitioner title, straight from the unified rulebook:

Read that table as a map of where the Gulf looks for its benchmarks, not as a verdict on European medicine. The picture flips completely once you are a specialist. Tier 1 specialty certificates earned in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden or Switzerland do exempt you from the DHA exam at specialist and consultant level, alongside the Emirati Board and the usual Anglophone countries. So a European degree plus European specialty training is a strong combination later. The European degree on its own, at day one, is not a shortcut.

What do you need before you can book the DHA exam?

Five conditions have to be true before the DHA exam is even on your calendar, and the experience rule is the one that surprises people. The requirements come from the unified Professional Qualification Requirements, the 3rd version of the rulebook that the UAE's four health regulators publish together.

• A medical degree of at least five years, not counting the internship year. Every European MBBS equivalent runs six years, so this one is comfortable.
• A 12 month internship after graduation. Where the internship is built into a non UAE programme, it can be accepted if it was completed after your final degree examination.
• Two years of clinical experience after that internship before you can apply for the general practitioner title.
• A valid licence or registration to practise in your home country and/or your country of last employment, valid for the period that covers your required experience.
• A good standing certificate, issued by the regulator where you last worked and not older than six months when you apply.

That fourth point is the fork in the road for an Indian graduate of a European faculty. Either you register and work in the country where you studied, or you come home, clear the FMGE screening exam and register with a state medical council in India. Both routes produce the registration Dubai asks for. Neither can be skipped, and the two years of experience run alongside whichever one you choose.

How does the Dubai licence process actually run?

It runs through Sheryan, the DHA's own licensing portal, and the order is fixed. Nothing moves until the step before it clears, which is why the whole thing takes months rather than weeks.

1. Create a Sheryan account and run the free self assessment, which tells you which title you can realistically apply for.
2. Check your papers against the Professional Qualification Requirements for that title.
3. Submit your degree, internship certificate, experience letters, licence and good standing certificate for primary source verification, which the DHA has delegated to an outside verification agency.
4. Once verification is positive, generate the eligibility identifier that lets you book the DHA exam.
5. Schedule the assessment at a Prometric centre and sit it.
6. Pass, and the DHA issues your professional registration certificate and lists you on the Dubai Medical Registry.
7. Join a licensed Dubai facility, which activates the licence in your name. Your first DHA licence is always a full time licence.

Documents in any language other than English or Arabic need a certified legal translation, and the originals have to be available. Start collecting transcripts and internship certificates from your European faculty while you are still on campus. Chasing a registrar's office from 4,000 kilometres away is a miserable way to spend a year.

What is on the DHA exam paper?

The DHA exam for the General Practice title is 150 multiple choice questions in a three hour slot, with exam code GEN5331, a fee of USD 280 and a pass mark of 60 percent. Those three hours include registration and the instructions, not just the questions. You get a pass or a fail in your Sheryan account, and nothing more.

The syllabus published with the DHA exam guideline is ordinary general practice, not exotica: chronic diseases, acute and common medical problems, common paediatric problems, women's health, emergencies, common surgical problems, common psychiatric problems, common eye and ENT problems, common skin problems, basic epidemiology and evidence based medicine, family medicine concepts, and screening and periodic health examination. The reference list names Davidson's Principles and Practice of Medicine, Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine and the Toronto Notes.

Every assessment is conducted in English, and no translator is allowed in the oral assessments that some specialist and consultant titles get instead of a written paper. For a graduate of an English taught European programme that is a quiet advantage. You have already spent six years being examined in the language the paper is written in.

How many attempts do you get at the DHA exam?

Three. The rulebook counts attempts across all four UAE authorities, not per regulator, so failing twice in Dubai and once in Abu Dhabi uses up the same three chances. The DHA's licensing manual is blunt about what follows: fail the third attempt and you are blocked from reapplying for a DHA licence for two years.

Two openings survive that. You may be granted one final attempt with a different authority after failing three times with one, and you can reapply for up to three fresh attempts once you hold a new recognised qualification or have gained at least two more years of clinical experience since your last try at the DHA exam. There is also a lower title route: if you fail all three and apply for a title below the one you wanted, you can be granted one additional attempt, provided you meet that title's requirements.

Treat the DHA exam as a paper you prepare for properly, once. It is not a formality, and a casual first attempt is expensive in a way that money does not measure.

Does a Dubai licence work in the other emirates?

Not automatically, but it travels well. Four regulators share the UAE rulebook: the Ministry of Health and Prevention, the Department of Health in Abu Dhabi, the Dubai Health Authority and the Sharjah Health Authority. A doctor who already holds a valid licence from any one of them can be exempted from the licensing exam when moving to another, provided the professional qualification requirements for the title are met, the attempt limit was not exceeded, and a valid good standing certificate and a full verification report are supplied.

The traffic runs both ways in discipline too. If one authority suspends or revokes a licence, the others apply the same decision. And if your licence has expired or been cancelled, it must not be more than six months past expiry when you apply somewhere else. Long gaps are treated seriously across the board: a non Emirati doctor who has been out of clinical practice for more than five years generally cannot apply at all, and gaps over three years bring continuing education and retraining requirements before a licence is possible.

What do Saudi Arabia and Qatar ask for?

Different numbers, same shape. All three systems want a verified degree, a licence from somewhere you have already practised, documented experience and an exam. Where they differ is how much experience they demand from a young doctor.

Qatar's supervised general practitioner category is the detail worth circling if you are young, with one big condition attached. It needs no prior experience, which makes it one of the few Gulf doors open to a doctor who has just finished an internship, but the guidelines make a Qatari ID under family sponsorship mandatory for that category, plus a supervision letter and an undertaking letter. In practice it suits someone whose family already lives in Qatar. Reviewing a complete evaluation file takes Qatar 25 working days. Qatar also publishes its own exemption list for the GP qualifying exam, and it is slightly wider than the UAE's: the IFOM Clinical Science Exam with a minimum score of 60, USMLE Step 2, PLAB Part 1, MCCQE Part 1, the AMC multiple choice paper, PRES MCQ Part 2 and the MRCGP applied knowledge test. Once again, no European degree and no European exam.

Where a European degree genuinely helps you

Plenty, once you stop expecting it to work as a licence by itself.

Your six year programme clears the five year minimum with room to spare. You were taught and examined in English, which is the language of every Gulf assessment. If you take a first post in the country where you studied, your European registration satisfies the licence requirement and your two years of experience accumulate at the same time, which is the cleanest version of this plan. And a specialty certificate earned later in Germany, France, the Netherlands or another listed country takes the DHA exam off the table at specialist and consultant level.

The market is not shrinking either. Dubai's private healthcare workforce passed 69,400 professionals in 2025, up from 64,100 in 2024, with roughly 5,800 licensed facilities including 55 hospitals. That is a little over 8 percent growth in a single year, and it is the reason recruiters keep calling.

What to do now if the Gulf is your plan

Do not let a Gulf plan choose your medical school. Choose a recognised European faculty first, because a degree that is not accepted at home is worthless everywhere. Our overview of MBBS in Europe and the universities we work with are the place to start, and the NMC rules for studying abroad decide whether the degree counts in India.

Then plan backwards from the licence. Book your internship year deliberately rather than drifting into it. Decide early whether your registration will come from your European host country or from India after the screening exam, and keep every experience letter, logbook and payslip, because verification agencies ask for the paperwork, not the memory. Keep an eye on what else a medical degree can do for you while you are at it. The DHA exam is the last gate on this road, not the first one. Very few students who ask about Dubai at 18 end up there at 28, and that is fine.

Reviewed by MUDr. Amandeep Grewal, a qualified physician on the futuredoctor editorial team.

Sources

• UAE health regulatory authorities (MOHAP, DOH Abu Dhabi, DHA, Sharjah Health Authority), Unified Healthcare Professional Qualification Requirements, 3rd version, served as PQR_April_2025.pdf from the DHA Sheryan portal (degree length, internship, experience, licence and good standing rules, three attempt limit, exam equivalency tables for general practitioner, specialist and consultant, licensure recognition among the authorities, gap of practice rules), accessed 23 September 2026: https://services.dha.gov.ae/sheryan/wps/contenthandler/war/SheryanHomeThemeStatic/themes/Portal8.5/docs/PQR_April_2025.pdf
• Dubai Health Authority, Manual for Licensing Healthcare Professionals, version 1.1, issued 20 November 2024 (three attempts and the two year block, primary source verification delegated to a third party agency, Sheryan licensing process, full time first licence, translation rule), accessed 23 September 2026: https://www.dha.gov.ae/uploads/122024/Manual%20for%20Licensing%20Healthcare%20professionals-202420241212775.pdf
• Dubai Health Authority, Healthcare Professional Licensing Assessment Guideline (Computer Based Testing), updated September 2026 (150 questions, three hour slot, exam code GEN5331, USD 280 fee, 60 percent pass score, syllabus and references, Prometric network of 8,000 centres in more than 160 countries), accessed 23 September 2026: https://services.dha.gov.ae/sheryan/wps/contenthandler/war/SheryanHomeThemeStatic/themes/Portal8.5/docs/Final_Online_Exam_Guideline_CBT.pdf
• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties, Professional classification requirements (qualification documents, verification of foreign credentials, valid professional registration certificate from the applicant's country, minimum one year of experience for non Saudis), accessed 23 September 2026: https://scfhs.org.sa/en/professional-classification-requirements
• Saudi Commission for Health Specialties, Classification exams booking service, accessed 23 September 2026: https://scfhs.org.sa/en/classification-exams
• State of Qatar, Ministry of Public Health, Department of Healthcare Professions, Guidelines for Physicians (IMED FAIMER listing, supervised and full general practitioner categories, five years of experience for overseas applicants, GP qualifying exam with five trials, exemption list, primary source verification report), accessed 23 September 2026: https://dhp.moph.gov.qa/en/Documents/Guidelines%20for%20Physicians.pdf
• Dubai Government Media Office, Dubai's healthcare ecosystem posts record growth in 2025, 18 February 2026 (private healthcare workforce above 69,400 in 2025 against 64,100 in 2024, about 5,800 facilities including 55 hospitals), accessed 23 September 2026: https://mediaoffice.ae/en/news/2026/february/18-02/dubais-healthcare-ecosystem-posts-record-growth-in-2025