Naturopathic Physicians Licensing Examinations

rdf:langString Naturopathic Physicians Licensing Examinations

rdf:langString The Naturopathic Physicians Licensing Examinations (NPLEX) are professional licensing exams administered by the North American Board of Naturopathic Examiners (NABNE). Graduates of naturopathic programs accredited by the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education (CNME) are required to pass the exams before being permitted to practice naturopathic medicine in a U.S. state or Canadian province that licenses naturopaths. (Some naturopaths who graduated prior to the advent of the NPLEX were licensed by examinations administered by state licensing boards.) There are concerns that the NPLEX does not test naturopathic examinees on the knowledge necessary for the practice of primary care medicine. However, naturopathic advocates claim that the NPLEX is equivalent to other standard medical licensing examinations, such as the USMLE and COMLEX-USA, but this has not been established by independent analysts due to the exam being withheld from external review. Unlike the USMLE and COMLEX-USA, the NPLEX is exclusively a written, multiple-choice exam and, therefore, does not contain sections to test clinical skills on modeled patients.