FFICM Examiners Report - October 2017

Candidates

82 candidates attended the exam, of these 26 had a previous pass in either the Structured Oral Exam (16) or the OSCE (10).

SOE

The Borderline Regression (BR) and Hofstee methods were used in the standard setting of the SOEs, with Hofstee being used to cross reference the result achieved from the BR method. All statistical analysis available was discussed by the Board of Examiners. The final pass mark of 27 out of 32 was reached through a combination of statistical analysis and expert judgement after consideration of borderline candidates. 66 candidates sat the SOE. Of the 66, 48 (73%) passed the SOE component. 10 candidates sat the SOE with a previous pass in the OSCE. 9 from 10 passed giving a 90% pass rate for SOE only applicants.

OSCE

Standard setting was performed using modified Angoff referencing by the OSCE working party in advance and a cumulative pass mark of 158/240, 160/240 and 158/240 was reached for the 3 questions sets used over the two days of the exam. 72 candidates sat the OSCE. Of the 72, 56 (78%) passed this component. 16 candidates sat the OSCE with a previous pass in the SOE. 11 candidates passed, giving a 68.75% pass rate for OSCE only candidates.

Overall

55 candidates from 82 (67%) passed the exam overall and achieved the Fellowship in Intensive Care Medicine. This compares with 66% in March 2017. Examiners commented upon a number of candidates who had attended the exam with a fail in one component who on this occasion achieved full marks in the SOE or high scores in the OSCE. There are many possible explanations for this. One would be the ability to concentrate on one part of the exam in isolation but an alternative suggestion is that able candidates who had previously presented to the exam inadequately prepared performed well following an adequate amount of study. An overview of results are set out in the table below: