The development of the Bachelor of Medicine & Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) course in Nepal is recounted. From the stage of having a single medical college to the stage of having ten is documented. The role that the Nepal Medical Council (NMC) has played in the development of medical education in Nepal has been adequately described. Comparison of the MBBS course that the three universities are running the MBBS is done and suggestions are made for possible future directions.

The NMC did not at the start have a syllabus of its own and in the early years stated that the "MBBS Curriculum of the Institute of Medicine would be the reference document of the NMC." It was at the time of the starting of the private medical colleges that the availability of a printed curriculum was sought and its lack was felt. Thus the revised second version of the IoM curriculum was hastily brought out. It was much later that a first version of the MBBS curriculum was prepared by the NMC but it has not been printed yet.

The medical curriculum may be said to have evolved during the course of the 20th Century. What had initially been an apprenticeship for professional training for a number of years was replaced by a course of study, to enter which the candidate had to be adequately versed in Biology and Chemistry. Some forms of adjustments were made with the existing system of professional training. As an example one can instance the situation in England, Scotland and Ireland where the different Royal Colleges and the Society of Apothecaries all produced manpower to function as practitioners in the health service sector.

A medical curriculum constitutes the institutional goals, objectives, subject content, learning experiences and assessment techniques. The matter covered by the curriculum and imbibed by the medical student is from the day of entry into the medical school till the time that the internship ends.

As far as Nepal is concerned though Gray's Textbook of Anatomy was translated into Parbatiya as far back as 1909 it was only in 1978 that the first medical course in Nepal was started by the Institute of Medicine.