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Introduction

This is going to be in two parts, the first part will be specific to people who finished their housejob in UCH as it will entail how to sign your assessment forms in the different departments and with the CMAC, as well as how to obtain a letter of introduction. The second part will talk about full registration requirements, payments and getting your licence.

Part 1

This process should start as soon as you start housejob. Go to the ARD secretariat in the ARD lounge on the 3rd floor of the hospital complex and collect your MDCN forms.
You should collect 5 forms.

• 4 identical form F’s
• Form B.

Form F comes in triplicates, containing a doctors copy, hospital’s copy and council’s copy. You will collect a form F for each of the 4 departments you will rotate through.

For ease of understanding, when you collect your forms, you should count 24 leaves of form F (6 leaves per form) and 3 leaves of Form B. Note that form E is usually printed behind each of the form F.

After collecting these documents, keep form B and three copies of form F safely tucked away as you woud not be needing them yet. The fourth copy of form F with you will be used for your current posting.
Next, I will describe how the MDCN form F is completed for each of the different postings as at the time of writing this article.

Paediatrics

As you start paediatrics, take the form F and make 6 photocopies of the first leaf -the front and the back. This will be for the 3 Senior Registrar’s (SR) and 3 Consultant’s under whose unit you will be rotating through.At the end of each month, take a photocopy to the SR that supervised you for that month and follow them up making sure they sign on time. Dont take to the consultants yet, but fill the 3 forms appropriately indicating which units and which consultant would sign on the form.
At the end of 3 months, after each of the 3 SR’s must have signed, take the 3 signed SR forms, correctly filled photocopied form F’s for 3 consultants and correctly filled complete MDCN form for paediatrics (fill each of the Doctors, Hospital and Council’s copy) and submit them to the departmental office.Constantly follow this up at the office as there may be some delay and you would need to solve some of them yourself by going to see some of the consultants, or else your form might be left unattended to for weeks.
Ideally, the signed MDCN form should be ready in 2 weeks or less. When they are ready, you will pay a certain fee for clearance (1000 naira) and make photocopies to submit to the department after which you go away with only your signed MDCN form.

Obstetrics and Gynaecology

The department will give you their own assessment forms, sign them as you go along and as soon as possible. At the end of three months, take your appropriately filled MDCN form F (2nd of 4) and your completed assessment forms to a consultant of your choice. They will fill the MDCN forms using the assessment forms as a guide and then return it to you. You will then take it to the Head of Department’s office for signing and stamping.

Medicine

This used to be relatively easy when we spent all 3 months in one unit. Now, there are departmental assessment forms that will be given to you, which each of the supervising consultant of the three units you rotate through will use to assess you. Afterwhich you take the assessed forms and a filled MDCN form F (3rd of 4) to one of the consultants who transfers the assessment to the form, then you submit the form to the HOD for signing and stamping.

Surgery

You will receive 5 different assessment forms from the surgery departmental office. One or two consultants from each of the three units you rotate through will assess you at the end of your rotation. You must be assessed by a minimum of 5 consultants in surgery. Make sure you sign the assessment forms at the end each month/after completing a unit, so it does not pile up.
After the 5 forms have been filled, take them with your filled surgery MDCN form F (4th of 4) to any consultant in the last unit you rotated through, for transfer of your assessment to the MDCN form, after which you take the form to the HOD office for stamping and signing.

Sign with CMAC

Take all your correctly filled and signed MDCN forms; form B, 4 form F’s with form E’s printed at the back; letter of request for introduction and letter for caution fee refund to the CMAC’s secretary’s office .

CMAC Sec office: that small window just before you turn into the OTCHEW corridor when you are walking on the corridor behind the CMD’s office.

After 2 days your letter of introduction should be ready as well as your CMD signed and stamped MDCN forms.
Submit your hospital’s copy of the form F to the filing unit of the Human resource department

PART 2

Requirements for MDCN Registration

1. Evidence of Payment of 41,000
2. Letter of Introduction/Cover Letter
3. Form B(Full Registration Application Form)
4. Form F (Council’s Copy)
5. Form E (Council’s copy)
6. Copy of MBBS/MD/MBBCH/MBChB/ BDS/ BChD Certificate
7. Copy of Senior School Certificate
8. Copy of Birth Certificate/Declaration of age
9. Copy of Provisional Certificate and Licence
10. Evidence of Payment for insurance indemnity
11. NMA Building levy receipt

According to their notice, the full registration certificate and licence will be ready after 48 hours 4 weeks excluding weekends.

These documents should be mailed to their Abuja office (after you just have scanned them for the online part). Some of us asked a colleague living in Abuja to help us take it to their office. Make Sure you have scanned the documents before mailing it to them.
Some might ask, why the Abuja office? This is the headquarter office and documents sent to any other office will need to be mailed again to Abuja where the certificate and licence are processed. Hence, I advice that one sends it directly to Abuja and get a number to correspond with upon delivery of the documents to follow up on the progress of your licence.

Online part

Scan your documents and save to drive for safekeeping. For registration, scan your council’s copy form E, Form B, cover letter and council’s copy Form F (for the 4 different postings into one document) as separate PDF documents, each not greater than 5 mb. Go ahead and pay for your NMA building levy – N20,000 (if you are yet to pay), insurance indemnity – N7,500 and full registration levy – N41,000 on the platform. A picture of the breakdown of the full registration levy is shown below.

I am showing this because some of us were in a hurry to pay our licence, not knowing that it was already incorporated into the full registration fee.

Moral lesson: Do not be in a hurry, no not really, most people did it and we are all in the fix together, sub-moral lesson: do not be in individual trouble, rather strive for a collective one, you will all find a way out of it in a shorter time than if you are alone, there is a sub-sub-moral lesson from this, but i will just stop here.

Also, the MDCN Portal website is not as functional as it looks, you will need to be calling their customer care for technical troubleshooting every once in a while for things ranging from logging in and seeing another person’s passport in your profile to more sophisticated things like  a button in your profile refusing to click making it impossible to upload your documents.You also need to call someone at their office and follow them up until you have your licence even after meeting all the requirements.I hope this guide was easy to follow.  If you have any addition to this, please kindly get across through the comment section so I can update the article as required.

Till next time, bye!

Update 1:

I got my licence and full registration certificate 1 week after payment and 3 working days after submission of my documents to the Abuja office.
I didn’t even expect it, I was simply calling and pressing a staff at MDCN office to help with combining my two receipts of (31k and 10k). He said he would do it and the following day, I go to my profile and see that the payment is effected and my licence and full registration certificate are available for printing.Update 2:
I have just been informed that you can only pay for your MDCN full registration fees only after the CMD has signed you out (for those who may want to be proactive). That is, the date of payment must full on/after the date you were signed out.