The subject line of this email was the snappy title of a meeting I attended on Thursday 22nd January, organised by the Medical Schools Council (MSC).  I thought someof you might be interested in what was said, so I am going to attempt a brief summary for you here!

If anyone is really keen, the MSC and BMA Medical Students Committee position papers are attached to the bottom of the page.

The idea of the afternoon session was to bring together student reps from the majority of the UK medical schools, and to get their feedback on selection into Foundation Programmes - specifically what they felt were the strengths and weaknesses of the current system, and what they thought about proposals for the future.

It was generally agreed that the current system was working reasonably well (90% of people apparently obtained their 1st choice Foundation job last
year..... although the reps from London medical schools were quick to point out that the corresponding figure for London was significantly lower....).
However there were a number of widely supported criticisms, including: the perceived unfairness of the quartile system, and the fact that the 'white
space' system of open-ended questions may simply test 'creative writing' abilities!

The meeting then moved onto proposed changes to the system.  The MSC is hoping to consult on several different options until June of this year, and then recommend a favoured option to Ministers.  If approved, the plan would be to then run and evaluate pilot studies later this year.

4 main options were suggested:

1. National exam - all medical students take an exam, the results of which guide selection for Foundation Training. This idea is opposed by both the MSC and the BMA, and was rejected by the GMC when it undertook an option appraisal 2 years ago.
2. Current system plus interviews. The BMA Medical Students Committee seem to be supportive of this, and it was suggested that consultants would also be in favour of interviewing the trainees with whom they would be working.
3. Current system, plus interviews, plus common content of assessments. Currently more than half the medical schools in the UK draw some of their exam questions from a jointly developed 'question bank'.  It was suggested that this bank might be used to help select for Foundation training.
4. Develop a Structured Achievement Report, plus common content of assessments, plus interviews.Apparently the 'Structured Achievement Report' is in keeping with the trend in Higher Education in the UK for a HEAR (Higher Education Achievement Report). Essentially it would be a 'portfolio' that students would expand throughout their time at medical school.

There was quite a lively debate on all of the 4 proposals.  My general impression was that there was minimal support from the gathered students for
any sort of national exam, and a fair level of interest in the addition of interviews to the process.  The consensus was far less clear cut with options 3 and 4.

We should hopefully all hear more about this in June, although I don't think any of this will directly affect the crrent 5th year (unless we were to be incorporated into one of the pilot studies....!)

Hope that all makes some sense.  If you want any more information just drop me an email.
David Collyer