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Are orals worth talking about?
Author(s) -
Spike Neil,
Jolly Brian
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
medical education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.776
H-Index - 138
eISSN - 1365-2923
pISSN - 0308-0110
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2923.2003.01422.x
Subject(s) - citation , spike (software development) , library science , psychology , medicine , computer science , software engineering
‘Would you tell me please, which way I should go from here?’ ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat. ‘I don’t much care where,’ said Alice. ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat. (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Lewis Carroll) In this issue, Wass et al. report a study of the reliability of the oral component of the Royal College of General Practitioners membership examination (MRCGP). There has been a move away from oral examinations at postgraduate level in Australia and Canada and at a medical undergraduate level in the UK. However, this thoughtful study shows that our doubts regarding the reliability of oral examinations can be tempered by attention to structure, careful training and standardisation of examiners, and purposive sampling of content. The paper highlights the need for quality assurance procedures for all examinations.