Dubai Health Authority — General Surgery licensing examination

What are the parts of the DHA examination?

Dubai Health Authority sets 2 components: DHA Specialist General Surgery — CBT (code GEN5341) (a written multiple-choice paper, 150 questions, 3 hours); DHA Consultant General Surgery — oral assessment (an oral viva).

How many questions are in the DHA examination?

150 across all written components, as published by Dubai Health Authority.

What does the DHA syllabus cover?

16 domains published by Dubai Health Authority: Fluid and Electrolytes, Shock, Sepsis and Surgical Infections, Endocrine and Breast, Upper GI, Vascular, and others.

Where is the official DHA syllabus published?

Dubai Health Authority publishes it at https://services.dha.gov.ae/sheryan/wps/contenthandler/war/SheryanHomeThemeStatic/themes/Portal8.5/docs/Final_Online_Exam_Guideline_CBT.pdf. Our question mapping is taken from that document, domain by domain.

What is the DHA examination like?

Worth saying first: this is NOT a specialty board, it is a LICENSING examination to practise in Dubai. The mode is set by the DHA per specialty and published in its table; and the numbers differ between them: the DHA-wide minimum is 60%, and it is higher for several professions and specialties. For GENERAL SURGERY specifically, the official computer-based examination guideline sets code GEN5341, a hundred and fifty multiple-choice questions, three hours — registration and introduction included — and a 65% pass mark. Where this page gives a single figure, it is the general surgery one. It is administered by Prometric through their worldwide network of centres, so it can be sat outside the Emirates. The process starts with the DHA self-assessment tool and runs through primary source verification of qualifications before professional registration.

Who can sit the DHA?

You need a DHA-recognised medical degree, a completed internship, relevant clinical experience, a valid licence from your home country and a certificate of good standing. Because it is a licence and not a certification, it does not replace a specialty board: anyone wanting to be certified has to do that separately.

Is there a question bank for the DHA?

This one. 5,000 single-best-answer questions across the whole of general surgery, each with the reasoning for every option rather than only the correct one, written by a consultant surgical oncologist. It is written to the discipline, not transcribed from the DHA blueprint — general surgery is general surgery wherever it is examined, and we say plainly which boards we have mapped and which we have not.

What level are the questions for the DHA?

2,051 of the 5,000 — 41% — sit at the hardest level. For a licence like the DHA that matters differently than it does for an exit board: this is not measuring a residency curriculum but clinical breadth to practise, so what fails candidates is rarely the hard subspecialty question and usually the on-call one that was assumed known. That is why the Gulf bank is cut to the published syllabuses.

What does preparation for the DHA cost?

One payment of $99 for 180 days, the same from wherever you pay — there is no country pricing. It covers the whole bank, the oral simulator and the timed mock papers. Nothing renews and no card is kept on file afterwards. Fifty questions are free with an account, so you can judge the level before paying. All three Gulf syllabuses are published in full and free, whether you buy anything or not.

180 days

$99