Regional variations in surgical examination performance across the UK: is there a postcode lottery in training?

Abstract

We welcome orginal articles for the trainees' forum on any subject of interest to surgical trainees (maximum 1,500 words). We will also consider letters commenting on articles published in the trainees' forum. Please email articles to bulletin@rcseng.ac.uk.The restrictions placed on training opportunities mean that good-quality teaching is of paramount importance to the modern surgical trainee. The authors of this month's article have constructed a league table of training regions based on success rates of candidates sitting the MRCS examination. They acknowledge that pass rate at examination is only one surrogate measure of training standards and that an objective assessment and ranking of rotations would need to take into account several other factors. Nevertheless, a relatively large variation in performance is evident, which highlights the need for more comprehensive, transparent assessments of the quality of training delivered.Bijan Modarai

Inspiring the next generation of surgeons

“…Such factors require government intervention to better the regional infrastructure. Moreover, there appears to be regional differences in the quality of core surgical training with large variations in the pass rate scores for Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) Objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) results 7. Further analysis may be required to show conclusive results as there can be other reasons accounting for the variation such as the undergraduate university the applicants attended.…”