The Gulf GP Exams: One Question Bank for Seven Regulators

If you are a doctor planning a move to the Gulf, the first surprise is that the exam you prepare for depends on a map, not on your qualification. This page sets out what each regulator publishes, what it does not, and how to prepare for the part that is common to all of them. Every figure is dated 21 October 2026 and comes from a regulator or test-provider page unless we say otherwise.

There is no single "Gulf GP exam"

The phrase is shorthand. Seven regulators license general practitioners across five countries, and each runs its own assessment, with its own provider, pass mark, attempt rules and fee. Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the northern emirates are three separate regulators inside one country. A pass with one is not a pass with another, and the sources we reviewed describe no blanket recognition between Gulf regulators. There are narrow arrangements, such as DOH exempting holders of a valid DHA or MOHAP licence for the same title, and MOHAP allowing you to apply through DHA or DOH after three failed attempts.

What is shared is the clinical core. Every one of these papers is a computer-based multiple-choice test of general medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics and surgery, with patient safety, ethics and preventive medicine around the edges. That shared core is what one question bank can train. The regulator-specific part is rules, booking and, for a few regulators, format.

For the side-by-side version with attempt limits, see the regulator-by-regulator comparison. Rules change by circular and without notice, so treat any table, ours included, as a planning aid and confirm with the regulator before you pay.

Who sits it

The audience is the foreign-trained doctor who wants a general practitioner, general medical officer or equivalent post in the Gulf. Whether you actually sit an exam depends on your degree, your registration history and your experience, and the rule differs by regulator.

• UAE. Exemptions are set by the Unified Professional Qualification Requirements (PQR). DHA's materials set out the exemption routes. An exemption concerns the exam, and verification is a separate step to confirm with the regulator. At MOHAP an evaluation officer decides whether an exam is needed.
• Qatar. Certain certificates exempt the holder from the qualifying exam. The list sits in DHP circular DHP 19 2025 E, linked from the DHP exam page.
• Bahrain. NHRA Decision No. 29 of 2020 requires licence applicants to pass the licensure exam. The only stated exception is an exemption approved by the Supreme Council of Health.
• Saudi Arabia. SCFHS classifies practitioners. For medical graduates the published route is the SMLE.

If you have not yet chosen a country, compare the rules before the salaries. The attempt ceilings, the cost of a failed sitting and whether an exemption is available can change which offer is the safer one to accept. The comparison guide puts the seven side by side. If you already have an offer, go straight to that regulator's guide and read the booking section first, because the booking route is where weeks are lost. Whichever you choose, the revision is largely the same, and the shared content is where most of your preparation time belongs.

Eligibility and booking

The order of steps differs by regulator, but the shape is the same. The booking and fees guide has the per-regulator detail and the DataFlow guide covers the verification step that runs alongside.

1. Name the regulator. Your employer's location decides it: Dubai is DHA, Abu Dhabi is DOH, the northern emirates are MOHAP, then DHP in Qatar, OMSB in Oman, NHRA in Bahrain and SCFHS in Saudi Arabia.
2. Check whether an exam is required. Read the Unified PQR for the UAE, the DHP circular for Qatar, NHRA Decision No. 29 for Bahrain and the SCFHS classification rules for Saudi Arabia.
3. Start primary source verification. DataFlow is the verification partner named on the regulator pages we checked. It is a separate process from the exam and has its own timeline.
4. Apply and pay the regulator's fee. DHA works through a Sheryan account and an Eligibility ID. DOH works through TAMM. MOHAP works through its Evaluation System. NHRA issues an eligibility number valid for up to 4 months. SCFHS issues a scheduling permit after your e-application.
5. Book the sitting. Prometric for DHA, MOHAP, DHP, NHRA and SCFHS. Pearson VUE for DOH. Oman is covered in its own guide because the sources disagree on the provider.
6. Sit the exam and read the result in the place the regulator names: Sheryan for DHA, TAMM for DOH, an emailed score report for OMSB through Pearson VUE, and the SCFHS portal for the SMLE.

Format and scoring

The two formats you can plan around are the 150-item, 3-hour paper (DHA and Qatar DHP) and the 200-item, two-block SMLE. Both work out to the same pace: 72 seconds an item. At DHA the 3 hours include registration and the introduction, so the real working time is shorter, and the guideline does not say by how much. Plan for roughly a minute per item and use the spare time for flagged questions.

Four options per item, one best answer, is the confirmed SMLE format. The other regulators do not state an option count on the pages we checked, so we do not state one for them. Our bank uses four options (A to D) and one best answer on every item, with no select-all-that-apply, which is safe practice for every paper.

A 60% pass mark means 90 correct out of 150 if every item is scored. The regulators do not say whether any items are unscored pilot items, except the SMLE, where the blueprint allows up to 10% pilot questions, which is up to 20 of the 200 items. SMLE results are scaled, and the pass mark of 560 on a 200-800 scale is not a percentage of correct answers. DHA, DOH and MOHAP report Pass or Fail only, so a fail gives you no domain feedback. Detail is in the pass mark and scoring guide.

What the regulators leave unpublished

A good plan starts with knowing the gaps. On the official pages we checked on 21 October 2026, the following are not stated, and we have not filled them in from memory or from prep-provider claims.

• DOH Abu Dhabi: question count, duration and pass mark for the doctor exam.
• MOHAP and NHRA: question count. NHRA does state a 3-hour seat with 2.5 hours of exam time.
• The number of options per item, for every regulator except SCFHS.
• Exam fees at DOH, Qatar DHP, NHRA and SCFHS. DOH confirms that you pay in TAMM before the Pearson VUE link appears and that the fee is non-refundable, but not the amount.
• Whether Oman's OEGP is delivered by Pearson VUE or Prometric. The sources disagree, so ask OMSB.
• Any licensing turnaround time after you pass.

Where a number is missing, the page tells you who to ask and which document governs. That is deliberate. A confident wrong figure costs you a booking.

The Gulf content that is easy to miss

Most of each paper is international medicine, but the regional items are where a candidate trained elsewhere can lose marks. Our bank treats them as legitimate stem contexts and sources them to WHO and the named guideline bodies: MERS-CoV and its camel reservoir, brucellosis from unpasteurised dairy and animal contact, diabetes and Ramadan fasting under the IDF-DAR 2021 guidance, consanguinity and inherited blood disease such as thalassaemia, sickle cell disease and G6PD deficiency, rickets and vitamin D deficiency, and heat illness. The SMLE blueprint itself lists brucellosis, MERS-CoV and COVID-19, sickle cell disease, haemoglobinopathies in children, rickets, travel health, sick leave and social media practice. See high-yield topics for how to rank them.

Blueprint by domain

Two regulators publish a blueprint. SCFHS publishes percentages for the SMLE, and Qatar DHP publishes item counts for its General Practitioner exam. DHA, DOH, MOHAP, OMSB and NHRA publish no weights on the pages we checked. So our domain split is an editorial choice: anchored on the SMLE, widened to cover the primary care and public health content that GP papers in the region are described as including. It is not any regulator's blueprint, and we do not claim it mirrors one.

Now the two blueprints that exist. They use four clinical areas, and both put roughly a third of the paper in medicine and a fifth in surgery.

The DHP percentages are our arithmetic on its item counts. The blueprint states counts, not percentages. If you are aiming at the SMLE or at Qatar, revise obstetrics and gynaecology and paediatrics harder than the bank mix alone would suggest. If you are aiming at DHA, DOH, MOHAP, OMSB or NHRA, use the SMLE and DHP shapes as the best available evidence, not as a promise.

How to prepare

A phased plan beats a topic list because the exam rewards recognition under time pressure. The study plan gives 8, 12 and 16-week versions. The structure is the same in each.

1. Diagnose (week 1). Sit a mixed block of 50 items untimed. Mark each wrong answer as knowledge, misreading or time. Do not judge yourself on the score.
2. Build by domain. Work the ten domains in order of weight and weakness. Read the guideline for the topic first, then do questions. The high-yield topics guide ranks what to read first.
3. Mix and time. Move to mixed, timed blocks of 50 so that you practise switching from paediatrics to ethics to cardiology, which is what the real paper does.
4. Simulate. Do two or three full-length sittings at the pace of your target paper: 150 in 3 hours, or 100 per 120-minute block for the SMLE. Review every flagged item.

One rule keeps guideline-based items clean: answer from a single guideline family per question. Use WHO guidance for public health, immunisation and screening, specialty guidelines such as ESC, ADA and IDF, KDIGO, GINA, GOLD, the Surviving Sepsis Campaign and ATLS for their fields, and NICE and the BNF as the tie-breaker for UK-style prescribing. Do not mix US and European thresholds inside one answer.

Common reasons candidates fail

No regulator publishes failure analysis. The points below are our editorial reading of prep-provider commentary and of the format itself, not regulator data.

• Running out of time. 150 items in 3 hours leaves 72 seconds an item, and less at DHA once registration is taken out. Candidates who study untimed arrive at the centre with the wrong pace.
• Thin breadth in the small specialties. Dermatology, ENT, ophthalmology and musculoskeletal items are individually small but together form a tenth of our bank, and they are the topics most people skip. See the primary care domain.
• Weak ethics and patient safety. Short on weight, but candidates lose easy marks by treating these as common sense. The answer follows a recognised principle, not a personal view.
• Mixing guideline families. A stem usually wants the single best guideline-concordant next step. An answer that is right under a US threshold can be wrong under ESC.
• Next-best-step items. "Most appropriate initial investigation" and "next step" items in emergencies, obstetrics and paediatrics reward sequencing, not recall of facts.
• Not knowing the regulator's rules. Attempt limits are tight. In the UAE the sources describe a maximum of three attempts, and a third failure can bar reapplication for a period. Sitting before you are ready costs more than a delayed booking.

After the exam

Where you read the result depends on the regulator. DHA posts Pass or Fail in your Sheryan account with no score. DOH and MOHAP also report Pass or Fail. For OMSB, Pearson VUE emails the score report within 24 hours of the exam. For the SMLE, results follow 2 to 6 weeks after the testing window closes, with a feedback report.

A pass is a step, not the licence. Verification, any remaining documents, the regulator's own licensing decision and your employer's sponsorship all follow. We do not quote licensing timelines because none of the regulators publishes one we could verify. If you do not pass, check the attempt rules before you rebook: they differ sharply, from a three-attempt ceiling in the UAE to five consecutive attempts in Qatar and four attempts a year for the SMLE. The scoring guide sets them out.

Guides for each regulator

• DHA General Practice exam (Dubai)
• DOH Abu Dhabi exam
• MOHAP evaluation exam
• Qatar DHP qualifying exam
• Oman OMSB classification exam
• Bahrain NHRA licensure exam
• Saudi SMLE for general practitioners