Dear examiner,

I hope this mail finds you well. As you know, the delivery of the MRCS has had a significant number of challenges since the beginning of the pandemic. The Part A has been delivered on-line but the ICBSE on review have found some problems around replication of questions in the public domain.

 

To mitigate any possible compromise to the question bank, ICBSE urgently needs all our examiners to put forward suggested questions to build a comprehensive and robust question bank. The planned January diet of the exams had to be cancelled and the ICBSE are engaging with a new provider and model of provision of Part A for delivery of the next diet of Part A in April or May 2022. Unfortunately this means that many of our trainees will now have to wait longer than they had planned to take the first part of our exam.

 

I know and understand just how busy everyone is and the last thing you need is a request for more of your time, but I would not ask unless this was really urgent and critical for the recovery of the exam and to continue the support of our trainees’ progression.

 

Attached is the information and details from ICBSE as to their request. You, as experienced examiners, are the best positioned to help replenish the question bank. It is very important that examiners from RCSI are contributing our fair share of the workload here and the college will also look at other ways we can support ICBSE in the construct of the question bank and the QA processes.

 

I would be very grateful for your consideration of this important request from ICBSE and if you had any queries or questions please do not hesitate to contact me at any time (kryan@rcsi.ie)

 

ICBSE - Request to all MRCS examiners to submit new questions for the MRCS Part A Multiple Choice Question Bank 

 

Yours sincerely

 

Kieran Ryan

Managing Director of Surgical Affairs, RCSI.