If you are a doctor thinking about working in the UK, PLAB is probably the first thing you looked into. It is the exam the General Medical Council uses to test the knowledge and English of doctors who qualified outside the UK. But what decides which job you can actually take afterwards is not your PLAB score. It is your internship.
The GMC gives you a licence, not the right to work
GMC stands for General Medical Council. It keeps the official register of doctors in the UK and issues the licence to practise, roughly the role Iran’s Medical Council plays there.
To practise medicine in the UK you must be registered with the GMC and hold that licence. The licence says nothing about your right to work, though. Unless you hold a British or Irish passport, you need permission from the Home Office as a separate application.
The GMC also says plainly that registration does not guarantee you will find a job. Most people plan carefully for one of these two and get caught out by the other.
Have you completed an internship?
The answer changes everything that follows.
If you pass PLAB but have not completed an internship, the GMC grants you provisional registration. With provisional registration you may only work in a Foundation Programme Year 1 post, and UK law does not permit any other kind of job. If you completed a period of clinical experience after graduating, you can apply directly for full registration and that restriction does not apply to you.
| Registration | What it lets you do |
|---|---|
| Provisional | Foundation Programme Year 1 only |
| Full | Any medical work, with the two exceptions below |
| Specialist | Required for a consultant post |
| GP Register | Required for NHS general practice |
You cannot hold either of the last two on their own, because full registration has to come first.
The exam has two parts
PLAB stands for Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board. Part 1 is written: 180 multiple choice questions in three hours, so about a minute per question. Part 2 is practical, with sixteen eight-minute stations.
You can sit Part 1 in Cairo, Alexandria, Dubai and Riyadh among other places. Part 2 runs only in Manchester, so for that one you have to travel to the UK.
| Fee (from 1 April 2026) | Amount |
|---|---|
| PLAB Part 1 | £283 |
| PLAB Part 2 | £1,036 |
| Full registration with a licence | £481 |
| Annual fee to stay on the register | £481 |
Put one date in your diary. If you cancel Part 2 with fewer than 28 days to go, nothing is refunded and the whole £1,036 stays with the GMC. If your trip depends on a visa being granted, that date matters more than the exam date itself.
An overall 7.5 in IELTS is not necessarily enough
The GMC wants an overall score of 7.5, but alongside it a minimum of 7.0 in each of the four skills. So if your average comes out at 7.5 but your writing is 6.5, you will not be accepted.
OET is accepted too, with a grade B in each of the four skills. Both certificates are valid for two years, and yours has to be valid on the day you sit Part 1.
Booking the exam is your job alone
The GMC is explicit: a place is booked only from your own GMC Online account, and nobody but the account holder may access it. So if you give your login to somebody else, that act is itself misconduct and it can affect your registration later.
Any agency offering to book your exam place is therefore asking you to carry the risk for them.
Money you should never pay
The UK government’s own guidance says a recruitment agency must never charge you for finding you work. If one does, it is either a scam or unlawful.
Three costs are the employer’s to pay, not yours:
- The sponsor licence fee
- The Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) fee
- The charge an employer pays for hiring from overseas
If somebody bills you for these, either your money disappears or you are handed a fake CoS, and the visa is refused at the end of it.
Is the job advert real?
A few things you can check yourself before replying:
- Search the employer on the official register of licensed sponsors. No sponsor licence, no work visa.
- Look the company up on Companies House and see whether it is registered at all.
- Check whether the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the health regulator, has it registered.
- Find a real postal address on the website and put it into a map.
- Compare the salary with what the job actually pays.
One sign is simpler than all of these. If the company’s website talks more about visas and moving to the UK than about the care it provides, it is probably not an employer at all.
And if anyone asks for money up front against a promise of NHS work or accommodation, you can report it to Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud reporting centre. It costs nothing and it does not count against your own application.
This article is general information, not legal advice, and it describes published official rules rather than any individual case.
