15 August 2026 · 9 min read
Postgraduate medical residents in Nepal searching for "MEC research proposal guidelines" are usually looking for one document that tells them how to lay out a thesis protocol. It is worth clearing up at the start where that document actually comes from, because looking in the wrong place costs weeks.
The Medical Education Commission was established in 2019 to regulate medical education in Nepal — it runs the common entrance examination (MECEE-PG), and it governs admissions, seat allocation and fee structures across institutions. What it does not do is publish the thesis format you type your protocol into.
Your thesis guideline comes from the university or institution that will award your degree and examine you — IOM under Tribhuvan University, BPKIHS, Kathmandu University's school of medical sciences, PAHS or NAMS — together with your own department and your institution's Institutional Review Committee. Those are the three documents to collect in your first weeks of residency: the institutional thesis guideline, the departmental requirements, and the IRC's proposal submission format.
Under the Nepal Medical Council's regulations for postgraduate medical education, the thesis must be reviewed and approved by the concerned department and submitted at least six months before the theory and clinical or practical examinations, and acceptance of the thesis is a prerequisite for appearing in the final examinations. That last clause is the one to take seriously: an unaccepted thesis does not delay a grade, it delays your exam.
Work backwards from it. If the thesis is due six months before finals, and data collection plus analysis and writing realistically takes a year, and ethical approval takes one to two months before you may collect anything, then the protocol needs to be finished very early in your residency. Residents who start the protocol in their second year are almost always compressed at the end.
Institutional formats differ in detail but share a common skeleton. BPKIHS's guideline for submission of thesis protocol is a useful concrete example — it specifies a minimum of 13 pages excluding appendices, Arial 12 point, A4 paper, double spacing and margins of at least 2.5 cm on all sides. Check your own institution's numbers, but expect something in this range.
The single most common protocol revision is a mismatch between objectives and sample size. Your primary objective defines the primary outcome, and the primary outcome is what the sample size calculation must be based on. Keep the objectives to one primary and a small number of secondary — a protocol with six objectives of equal weight cannot be powered for all of them, and reviewers will say so.
Show the calculation in full: the formula, the prevalence or effect size you assumed, where that figure came from with a citation, the confidence level, the power, and any adjustment for non-response or attrition. "A sample of 120 will be taken" with no derivation is an automatic query. Note also that every medical institution is required to have a biostatistician for postgraduate resident theses — use them at the protocol stage, not after your data is collected, when nothing can be fixed.
Any research involving human participants needs ethical approval before any part of the work begins that touches participants — recruitment, interviews, blood samples, photographs, record extraction. Approval is not retrospective, and data collected before clearance generally cannot be used.
Have your guide read it early rather than at the deadline, and have your biostatistician sign off on the sample size and analysis plan separately. Check the audit trail through the document: every objective should appear in the methodology, in the data collection proforma and in the analysis plan. Then confirm the practical numbers — how many eligible cases your department actually sees per month, and whether that gives you your sample inside the study period. Feasibility is where the most painful revisions come from, because they usually mean redesigning rather than editing.
Note that all of the above is the general shape of the process; your institution's own guideline and your IRC's submission format are the binding versions, and they are updated from time to time. Always work from the current copy issued by your department.
Preparing a thesis protocol or research proposal for an MD, MS or MDS programme in Nepal and want it reviewed for structure, sample size justification and ethical documentation? Assignment Nepal's researchers can help — message us on WhatsApp at +977 9768768340.