The RCGP should consider whether the applied knowledge test (AKT) is ‘still fit for purpose’, LMC leaders have said.
GP leaders also voted that the BMA’s UK GP Committee should lobby RCGP to provide better ‘individualised, disability specific, evidence based reasonable adjustments for all trainees with disabilities for MRCGP exams’.
The AKT is one of the three essential summative assessments that needs to be passed in order to gain membership of the RCGP (MRCGP), alongside the Recorded Consultation Assessment (RCA) and the workplace-based assessment (WPBA).
Proposing the motion, BMA Northern Ireland’s junior doctors committee chair Dr Andrew Wilson lamented ‘the RCGP’s inability to appropriately manage their exams’.
He said: ‘The AKT needs further research to ensure that it is still fit for purpose… This exam is 15 years old, and while it is necessary in some form, it is a clinically incorrect format.’
He added: ‘The RCGP needs to streamline and make this process fit for purpose in 2020.’
He said that while exams are ‘necessary to ensure competence is reached’, BMA GPC UK must ‘ensure that they are fair, easy to apply for, and remain evidence based’.
Another part of the motion mandated GPC UK to ‘liaise with the RCGP to ensure an immediate return to the clinical skills assessment’.
In 2020, the RCGP replaced the clinical skills assessment (CSA) with the RCA, moving it online and reducing its cost during the pandemic.
Speaking against this part of the motion, Dr Alan Sage from the GP trainees committee pointed out that as the CSA took part in London, it was ‘highly inconvenient depending on how far away you are from London’.
‘The trainees committee recently surveyed over 600 of our members, and of the options for future assessment, nobody selected that they wanted the CSA to return.’
UK medical schools reached agreement with the GMC to implement the new Medical Licensing Assessment (MLA) from 2024/25, one year later than previously planned.
The MLA will consist of a standardised Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) and Clinical and Professional Skills Assessment (CPSA).
The GMC had previously said the new skills test would provide a level playing field for national and international doctors and end variation in the way medical schools assess their students, and would come in from 2023/24.
Motion in full:
AGENDA COMMITTEE TO BE PROPOSED BY GP TRAINEES COMMITTEE: That conference, with regards to the MRCGP examination process:
(i) calls on GPC UK to lobby the RCGP to provide improved individualised, disability specific, evidence based reasonable adjustments for all trainees with disabilities for MRCGP exams – PASSED
(ii) notes with dismay the repeated problems with the application process to take the MRCGP applied knowledge test – PASSED
(iii) calls on GPC UK to lobby the RCGP to consider if the applied knowledge test assessment is still fit for purpose 15 years after introduction – PASSED
(iv) mandates GPC UK to liaise with the RCGP to ensure an immediate return to the clinical skills assessment – TAKEN AS A REFERENCE BUT REJECTED
Source: BMA
