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Examinations, Graduation and the F1 Year
Wednesday 5th August will be the first day of work for our new F1 Doctors some of whom are already with us shadowing their new job, while the rest will arrive on Monday 3rd August for the induction period prior to taking up their posts. They total 51 in number and of these 19 are ‘ours’ and have graduated from the University of Bristol. Just as welcome the remaining F1s are predominately and perhaps not surprisingly from Birmingham, Oxford and Cardiff with 1s and 2s from 13 other UK medical schools.
With the year 3s long since disappeared the year 5s graduated on Monday 13th July. A total of 13 candidates failed finals out of a cohort of 256 (5%). The majority failed the ‘long case’. This is the finals exam we host in Gloucestershire as well as on the other six academies’ campuses. Any failures within academy are offered a re-sit so students would have to fail 2 long cases to have failed overall.
One of the issues raised by the GMC when they visited the medical schools this academic year (more on this in a future newsletter) was that they would like to see our examiners more obviously gaining experience in examining prior to finals. To that end we will be talking with our examiners from previous academic years to see if we can get them involved in mock year 5 exams and year 3 long case examinations across the academic year and not just at finals. It should be noted that these activities are considered just as valuable as teaching when it comes to explaining to the Strategic Health Authority what we have done with the SIFT money or alternatively they can be annualised as SPA activity in job plan negotiations (but obviously not both!).
Graduation was as ever a three part day with perhaps the most moving part being the Promises ceremony prior to the graduation ceremony. Students do undergo a graduation ceremony but those who are to be clinicians also automatically register as clinicians, in our students case with the GMC. The Promises ceremony is an opportunity for the students and their teachers to come together to recognise this and to recite an updated version of the Hippocratic Oath. Graduation is high drama, Pomp & Circumstances and a very loud organ. The garden party that follows
is I think always a little sad as it is really where the students sort of say goodbye to each other and their teachers.
The longest year in the whole of our medical curriculum is year 4 and that finished on Friday 24th July, after 46 gruelling weeks. These students face a real problem in terms of applying for the F1 posts that those in the year above have now secured for the next academic year. Once they leave Bristol, and usually following a short holiday, the year 4 students disappear all over the world on their electives. They don’t return until Monday 2nd November. Meanwhile, they have to apply for their F1 posts through a national matching system.
The process opens on September 28th but closes on October 23rd. In other words the whole process occurs while they are out of the country. It is though an online process, although the difficulties of trying to fill in a web based form down a dial up connection somewhere in the 3rd world are obvious. As a Medical School we have spent the whole of the last day of term with the students (and most turned up) just talking through what they could do before they go on their elective so that they can be certain they will be able to submit their application by noon on 23rd October It is the little things like forgetting which time zone you are in that can make a difference! From experience though we know that the single biggest error students make in applying for their F1 jobs is the single biggest error they make in their examinations, namely that they do not accurately read the question. Hopefully with this preparation we can prevent that happening this year.
Around 90% of our students get their first choice of Foundation School for F1 (and then they rank order the trusts within that Foundation School subsequently). It is immediately obvious that if such a high number are getting their first choice then it is unlikely that if unsuccessful students will get their 2nd, 3rd or 4th choice and most students who are unsuccessful will be getting their 7th, 8th or 9th choice. The numbers do match though and no graduate is left unemployed. The particular problem we have in the Severn Foundation School (Gloucestershire, Avon, Wiltshire and Somerset –
ie., exactly the same footprint as our clinical academies) is that we are nearly always the 1st or 2nd most popular school in the Country. This means that those students from other Universities who score highly are likely to displace our own students if our own students put together a poor application and score low.
So by way of a final word I just wanted to thank all colleagues who are involved in offering students support at this difficult time in giving them some guidance on their applications.
News
If you have got to here you will know that this is (at last) the first edition of the newsletter to go straight onto the website with its presence there announced by way of an email containing a URL but no attachment. The format remains the same for now but this gives us more freedom in terms of using pictures and graphics.
Term starts for:
Years 3 and 4: 7th September (8th with us)
Year 5: 2nd November
Schools’ open day
Building on what was achieved last year for school students wanting to go to medical school we are currently discussing with other professions a more generic day covering all our clinical professions and to be held jointly with the University of the West of England. The date is Thursday 19th November and it will again be at Redwood Education Centre at GRH.
Honorary Status
This is open to all clinicians – including non-doctors who are involved in the education of our students. The titles vary with activity but do contact Emily/Angie and apply. You have earned it!
Finals
So back to where we started! The 2009/2010 long case final examinations will be held at GRH all day on Tuesday 25th May 2010. Depending on changes to year 5 (more on this in a future newsletter) this could be the last time that we host them in this configuration so pop the date in your diary and do come and join us.