An evaluation of the performance in the UK Royal College of Anaesthetists primary examination by UK medical school and gender

Abstract

Background: There has been comparatively little consideration of the impact that the changes to undergraduate curricula might have on postgraduate academic performance. This study compares the performance of graduates by UK medical school and gender in the Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) section of the first part of the Fellowship of the Royal College of Anaesthetists (FRCA) examination.

An evaluation of the impact of country of primary medical qualification on performance in the UK Royal College of Anaesthetists’ examinations

“…A previous study of the FRCA primary examination has shown that there were wide discrepancies in the success according to UK University of primary qualification (Bowhay & Watmough 2009). There was no correlation between the numbers of candidates from a certain country and the success rates in taking the FRCA examination.…”

“…For ease of presentation and to reduce bias caused by some candidates making multiple attempts at the examination, countries where there have been less than 15 attempts have been excluded. Details of the analysis have been included elsewhere (Bowhay & Watmough 2009). SPSS version 16 was used to compare examination performance by country of primary medical qualification with independent sample t-tests; p 5 0.05 being considered significant.…”

Incorporating multi-source feedback into a new clinically based revision course for the FRCS(Plast) exam

“…Several authors have previously attempted to identify students at risk of failing undergraduate or postgraduate exams, but no method has been shown to be completely reliable (McManus et al 2003;Bessant et al 2006;Dewhurst et al 2007;Bowhay & Watmough 2009,). White et al (2009) showed that students who fail an exam can improve their success at the next attempt with a combination of review, reflection and self-assessment.…”

Bridging the gender gap in communication skills

“…Likewise, we cannot infer that males are superior physicians because they perform better on other tasks (Bowhay and Watmough 2009;McManus et al 2008). The use of the flower logo in the CanMEDS Roles Framework is an attempt to portray the interrelationship between the different competencies, and no single Role can be used as a measure of overall performance (Frank 2005).…”