Dr Zahid Asghar and Prof Niro Siriwardena presented their work on dyslexia in the MRCGP clinical skills assessment this August 2019 at the intercollegiate meeting, Sharing Good Practice in Postgraduate Assessment. The meeting took place at the Royal College of Physicians in London and included representatives from most UK medical royal colleges and the General Medical Council. The meeting was co-chaired by Prof Niro Siriwardena and Dr Ken Dagg, Chair of the MRCP(UK) Clinical Examining Board.
The meeting included a series of talks. Professor David Black spoke on ‘The current JRCPTB project on quality of training and outcomes’. Louisa Miller from the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh discussed, ‘The effect of borderline group size on the stability of cut scores using a borderline group method’. Prof Siriwardena and Zahid Asghar described their study on ‘Performance of candidates declaring dyslexia in the RCGP clinical skills assessment. This study showed that candidates in the MRCGP Objective Structured Clinical Exam, the Clinical Skills Assessment, were significantly more likely to fail despite existing reasonable accommodations being in place. This was the first study worldwide looking at the effect of dyslexia on a postgraduate medical clinical exam.
After lunch there were a series of talks including Jonathan Lund on the ‘The multiple consultant report: assessment for an outcomes based curriculum?’, and Stuart Hood on ‘The challenges of changing an established high stakes summative postgraduate clinical examination’. Dr Ken Dagg summarised the day and congratulated speakers and those attending on the excellent sessions and questions.
By Prof Niro Siriwardena