Qatar DHP: The Gulf GP Exam That Publishes Its Blueprint

The blueprint, item by item

DHP's General Practitioner Qualifying Examination Blueprint lists four content areas with item counts out of 150. It states counts, not percentages. The percentages below are our arithmetic.

The blueprint's table has a passing score column showing 60%, and the layout does not tie it to a single row. We read it as one overall cut score. It does not give a per-area pass mark. Patient safety, preventive medicine and ethics appear in the reference list but not in the item table, so we cannot tell how many items they carry or whether they sit inside the four areas.

Compare this with the SMLE: Medicine 30%, Obstetrics and Gynaecology 25%, Paediatrics 25% and Surgery 20%, each able to vary by plus or minus 5, as the blueprint states. The two shapes are almost the same. If you prepare for one, you prepare for most of the other.

Turning item counts into study hours

Our bank has ten domains and the blueprint has four areas, so a translation is needed. This mapping is editorial. It is a way to allocate hours, not a statement of what DHP counts under each heading.

The consequence: our bank gives obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics and surgery 15% each, so for Qatar you should add hours to obstetrics and gynaecology and paediatrics. About a quarter of the paper each is what the blueprint implies.

The reference list

DHP's blueprint document names reference books. The page layout is jumbled, so the grouping below is our reading. These are DHP's references as published; they are not a syllabus, and several editions are old. Use them to see the level and register DHP has in mind.

• Medicine: Toronto Notes (Canadian edition), Davidson's Principles and Practice of Medicine (22nd edition), Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine (19th edition), Kumar and Clark's Clinical Medicine (9th edition).
• Obstetrics and gynaecology: Hacker and Moore's Essentials of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Current Diagnosis and Treatment Obstetrics and Gynecology (11th edition), Gynaecology by Ten Teachers (20th edition), Llewellyn-Jones Fundamentals of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
• Paediatrics: Paediatrics for Medical Students, Nelson Essentials of Pediatrics (7th edition), Illustrated Textbook of Paediatrics (5th edition).
• Surgery: Current Surgical Therapy (12th edition, 2017), Bailey and Love's Short Practice of Surgery (26th edition, 2013), The Mont Reid Surgical Handbook (7th edition, 2017).
• Patient safety, preventive medicine and ethics: WHO Patient Safety Curriculum Guide (2011), Jekel's Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Preventive Medicine and Public Health (4th edition, 2013), the USPSTF Guide to Clinical Preventive Services, and the Professionalism and Ethics Handbook for Residents.

Two cautions. The references span guidelines from different decades and countries, so where a textbook and a current guideline differ, read the stem for which framework it follows rather than assuming the newest. And you do not have to read these books cover to cover. Treat them as a calibration of depth, then spend your hours on questions.

Rules, attempts and booking

• Format. 150 MCQs, computer-based, delivered by Prometric. The DHP exam page and Prometric say 3 hours. The blueprint document says 3.5 hours. Read the duration on your booking confirmation and train for the shorter figure.
• Cut score. 60% for general practitioners, general dentists and pharmacists. Specialty physician scopes are 65%. That makes the GP exam the entry level, and a specialist role is a different paper.
• Attempts. The DHP page says applicants can sit five consecutive times whatever the gap between attempts.
• Exemptions. The page links circular DHP 19 2025 E, which lists the certificates that exempt their holders, without listing them on the page itself. Some prep sites name particular postgraduate certificates. We have not confirmed any in the circular, so read it directly.
• Booking. After DHP's requirements are met, register and schedule through the online booking page, which leads to Prometric ProScheduler. Remote proctoring is stated for some DHP titles, not for the GP exam.
• Fees. Not published on the pages we checked. Read the amount on the Prometric payment screen.

Reading 90 out of 150

A 60% cut score is 90 correct answers. The blueprint shows a single passing score, so strength in one area can offset weakness in another. Here is an illustration, not a prediction: 30 of 47 in Medicine, 22 of 36 in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 22 of 37 in Paediatrics and 18 of 30 in Surgery adds to 92, a pass at about 61%. Each area in the example is near 60%. Now take a candidate who scores 40 of 47 in Medicine, 14 of 36 in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 15 of 37 in Paediatrics and 20 of 30 in Surgery. That is 89 out of 150, one item short of 90, despite an excellent medicine score. Two weak areas that make up about half the paper are a fragile position, and the real paper will not match your practice mix exactly. Aim for no area below about 55% in your timed mocks. That threshold is our rule of thumb, not a DHP requirement.

Practising to the blueprint

When you take a mixed mock, draw it in the blueprint ratio: of every 50 items, about 16 medicine, 12 obstetrics and gynaecology, 12 paediatrics and 10 surgery. That is closer to the DHP shape than a bank-weighted mock, and it trains the context-switching you will face. Tag each wrong answer by area and by cause. If you find that most obstetrics errors are in the same subtopic, such as hypertension in pregnancy, go back to the guideline and fix the subtopic, not the area.

Who this exam is for

DHP's GP exam is the general practitioner entry. Specialist physicians sit specialty exams, which our Qatar hub counts at 34 and which carry a 65% cut score. If you have a specialist post, you are not preparing for this paper and our bank is not built for it. If you hold a general post and are unsure which exam applies, ask DHP before booking.

Booking well

Book through the DHP route, not through a third party. Check your name, ID and the exam title on the confirmation, and keep a screenshot of the duration shown. If the confirmation says 3.5 hours, the blueprint was right and you have extra time. If it says 3 hours, you were right to train for the shorter figure. Either way, the booking confirmation is the document that overrides every article, including this one.

Verification for Qatar

DataFlow's Qatar page gives the fullest public step list of any regulator: create and activate a portal account, enter personal, education and experience details, provide a Letter of Authorization, review and pay, track the case, and download the report. It lists degrees and education certificates, work permits, passports, employment certificates, and good-standing and practice-licence documents among the documents checked, and says an existing DataFlow report from another authority can be reused and reviewed against DHP requirements. See the DataFlow guide.

What five attempts change and what they do not

Five consecutive attempts with no minimum gap is the most generous published rule among the regulators that state one, but the generosity is in the rule, not in the cost. Each sitting is a fee and a booking, the fee is not published, and a quick re-sit after a fail teaches little if you have not repaired the cause. Use the first attempt as a real attempt. After any fail, allow time to rebuild from your error log, and sit again when your mocks have changed, not when the portal allows it. The scoring guide shows how to set a readiness bar.

For the plan itself, use the 12-week version of the study plan and shift domain hours as above. If you also have an offer elsewhere, the comparison guide shows how Qatar's rules sit against the others.