Policy responses and statements

Name of organisation:

General Medical Council

Name of policy document:

Strategic Proposals for Assessment

Deadline for response:

25 October 2006

Background: Background: The College was invited to participate in a period of informal feedback on areas of policy development in undergraduate medical education. The GMC launched 3 documents for early consideration on assessment and student fitness to practice. This follows a wide-ranging consultation on 'Strategic Options for Undergraduate Medical Education' which the College participated in last year. The consultation focused on national assessment, student registration and key principles in 'Tomorrow's Doctors'. The final report is now available on the GMC website.

The purpose of this informal stage of the consultation process was to give interested groups and people a chance to inform the GMC's policies and direction of travel. Towards the end of 2006, the GMC will publish a full account of this feedback with a view to initiating formal consultations in 2007.

In the current informal document on assessment, the GMC set out a number of ways in which local arrangements could be improved:

- Making the external examiner system more robust
- Reviewing QABME with a view to promoting effective assessment
- Revising Tomorrow's Doctors to promote effective assessment
- Pursuing more specific outcomes and curricular requirements
- Identifying the outcomes and curricular requirements that can be assessed through shared systems
- The GMC is also considering national procedures and looking into the policy implications of:

(a) Shared questions in the examinations set by medical schools; or
(b) A national examination, success in which could be a condition for graduation and provisional registration NOTE: ET

COMMENTS ON
GENERAL MEDICAL COUNCIL
STRATEGIC PROPOSALS FOR ASSESSMENT

The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh is pleased to respond to the GMC on Strategic Proposals for Assessment.

Improving Local Arrangements

The College strongly supports the principle that all medical schools in the UK should be able to demonstrate that their graduates have achieved a core national standard of knowledge and clinical skills such that they are appropriate for provisional registration.  Therefore, GMC driven quality assurance procedures that improve the definition of core standards and support effective local assessment methods would be welcome.  The options offered in terms of strengthening the pool of trained external assessors, increasing the QABME focus on assessment, and encouraging sharing of question banks and partnerships between medical schools all have their place in this challenge.

The College agrees that the medical students must achieve core standards, but medical schools should not be constrained into a single national curriculum as this would stifle innovation and reduce choice for students and teachers.  This extends to innovation in assessment methods to ensure valid and reliable results from individual medical programmes.

National Procedures

The question of some type of national assessment to complement local school-specific assessments may be contentious but inevitable if patients are to be reassured about the quality of medical graduates and educators and employers are to discriminate fairly between candidates during selection procedures.  Encouraging the use of shared questions will improve efficiency and may support assessment generally, but cannot guarantee consistency.  A national assessment must build on local procedures, helping to calibrate more detailed local assessments and ensure achievement of core standards.

The legal position regarding graduates from European medical schools requires urgent clarification to sustain the confidence of patients in the competence of all provisionally registered doctors working in the UK, whatever their undergraduate background.

Copies of this response are available from:

Lesley Lockhart,
Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh,
9 Queen Street,
Edinburgh,
EH2 1JQ.

Tel: 0131 225 7324    ext 608
Fax: 0131 220 3939

[23 October 2006]