MMED: Whose faults if candidates don't shine?

The MMED examinations were just over. Pass rate for Part I, II and III (UKM centre) were 63%, 76% and 100% respectively. Well done and congratulations to successful candidates. To the unfortunate ones, my advise: Failure is just another way of discovering how NOT to do things right. So, do look back, and ponder upon yourself. Start by looking at YOU, before thinking of the examiners and patients, or unfriendly-looking invigilators!

Though I have always been on the candidates' side, I have to admit, as we get more and more familiar with both undergraduate and postgraduate examinations, as examiners, I realise the very one quality that we badly need: being objective. So, beside having 'kesian' etc., we need to be objective. Furthermore, I begin to suspect, there may be relationship between bad examination performance and actual clinical practise - this is yet to be subjected to a longitudinal study...

So, basically as examiners, we need to be objective when it comes to assessing the candidates. During the exam of course, we even have to put aside our 'opinion' on candidates outside examination (ie a candidate may be excellent in the exam, but in the ward he or she is so-so but this should not influence our judgement). Weakness or failure in one particular aspect of examination does not automatically fail you. For example, an (external) examiner gave 8/10 marks to a candidate in the long case, when in actual fact she missed a gross hepatomegaly. He argued that she had made a thorough assesment, discussed the diagnosis and management well and answered all questions appropriately.

There are a few comments by the examiners, worth noting here. Surprisingly, in the Part II short cases, out of 30 candidates, there was only ONE candidate who passed ALL the short cases! Every other candidate failed at least one short cases, and most failed badly ie given a mark of 3. Many failed the CVS and Neurology stations. More surprisingly, many were discovered to display poor examination techniques, and missed gross physical signs like past pointing in cerebellar syndrome, or prothetic click in an MVR. There were a number of candidates who failed 2 short cases, total average score in short cases <50%,>50%, but still failed the overall exam because he failed 3 out of 4 short cases.