An analysis of the performance of UK medical graduates in the MRCOG Part 1 and Part 2 written examinations

Abstract

These results show that there is variation in performance among the graduates from different medical schools in the Part 1 and Part 2 MRCOG written examination.

An evaluation of demographic factors affecting performance in a paediatric membership multiple-choice examination

“…Candidates who had qualified at the four highest performing medical schools had a 65.1% pass rate (138/212 candidates passing), a 2.7-fold higher pass rate than the graduates of the four medical schools with the lowest pass rates (61/257 candidates passing, 23.7%). Similar findings are reported for other specialties 8 12 14 15. Some medical schools perform well across several specialties26; it may be that these medical schools select for the brightest candidates.…”

“…Previous studies found consistent evidence for women performing better at undergraduate level,30 31 but did not identify significant differences at postgraduate level,11 32 for written papers, consistent with our data. Notable exceptions are the anaesthetic postgraduate written examination (FRCA), a negatively marked paper where men outperformed women,14 and the clinical parts of MRCP and MRCOG, where women performed significantly better,8 11 suggesting that there may be gender differences in performance for some examination techniques but not others.…”

“…Demographic data predicting outcome in membership examinations have been previously analysed for obstetrics and gynaecology,8 21 general medicine,10 11 12 22 23 general practice,15 16 psychiatry13 and anaesthetics,14 but not previously for paediatrics. UK graduates have been shown to perform consistently better than international medical graduates (IMGs) in general practice (MRCGP), general medical (MRCP) and psychiatry (MRCPsych) postgraduate examinations.…”

“…UK graduates have been shown to perform consistently better than international medical graduates (IMGs) in general practice (MRCGP), general medical (MRCP) and psychiatry (MRCPsych) postgraduate examinations. The medical school attended by UK graduates has also been found to be strongly associated with performance differences for MRCP12 15 and in obstetrics and gynaecology (MRCOG)8 and anaesthetics (FRCA) 14. The effect of gender is less consistent: for the MRCOG examination, there is some evidence to support higher pass rates for women than men,8 and in the MRCP examination, women performed better than men in the clinical face-to-face part of the examination (PACES) but not in the written examinations 11…”

UK medical selection: lottery or meritocracy?

“…It has been demonstrated that students from different medical schools perform with varying abilities in postgraduate examinations. 32,33 The SJT SJTs do not have any proven effi cacy in selecting appropriate candidates for junior doctor positions. In medicine, the validity of the SJT has been extensively evaluated only in the specifi c context of UK General Practice selection, 34 and low but signifi cant correlations between SJT scores and measures of General Practice performance have been found.…”