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CEM - FCEM
FCEM 2011 - Intention to sit (Download form here)
The College is committed to providing trainees with appropriate opportunities to sit the Fellowship examination and thus to gain their certificate of completion of Training. However, it is anticipated that in 2011, it is likely that the demand for places at the exam will exceed the number of places available. In order to accommodate this demand, we will need to book additional venues for additional weeks of examinations. In order to book the size of venue we need, we will be looking to finalise the numbers a minimum of 9 months in advance of the examination date. Failure to give this sort of notice severely constrains our choice of venue and dates.
All correspondence about the examination will be sent by email it is the candidates responsibility to ensure the EXAMINATION and TRAINING departments have their up to date email address. The College will not take any responsibility for emails sent to old email addresses that have not been updated.
There are three stages to booking a place in the exam:
Stage 1 intention to sit- deadline 30th April 2010.
If you will become eligible in 2011, or have still to successfully complete the exam, you need to notify the College by Friday, 30th April 2010 indicating whether you intend to sit the examination in the Spring or Autumn sitting of 2011. Please complete and return
Stage 2 payment of a deposit deadline 30th June 2010
There will be a further call for a non returnable deposit of £500.00 to secure a place, with a closing date for the deposit of 30th June 2010. The deposit will only be accepted from those who have expressed an intention to sit, so you are strongly advised to complete both stages of this process to secure a place. If you then choose to withdraw from the diet, your deposit will be retained (as we will have to pay for the venue once booked).
You will have a place reserved on the Spring or Autumn diet once you have submitted your intention to sit form and a non returnable deposit of £500.00.
Stage 3 submission of application form deadline 10th December for spring 2011, autumn 2011 date to be confirmed,
The deposit will be used as a part payment for your exam fee, with the balance due by the closing date of 10th December 2010 for Spring 2011 (Autumn closing date not fixed yet) with your fully completed FCEM application form and 3 copies of your CTR.
Candidates who need to resit the examination will need to submit a resit form and the full amount by the relevant closing date deposits are therefore unnecessary for resit candidates as they are guaranteed a place in the exam providing they apply by the closing date.
In summary - the cheque for £500.00 (made payable to the College of Emergency Medicine) and intention to sit form must be submitted to Viv Bovingdon and the closing date of receipt is 30th June 2010.
FCEM Spring 2010
The results of the SAQs are available here. Please do not ring the office for further information. Candidates who have not been successful in the clinical SAQ and who wish to drop out of the OSCEs must do so by 5pm on Wednesday 3rd February or their place will be held for them.
Candidates who have failed the SAQ(s) are not required to telephone the office to make a payment to resit the examination(s). The appropriate resit application form(s) will be sent out after the OSCE/Viva results are known.
The results of the Critical appraisal are disapointing. The Dean has offered the following initial feedback, further feedback will be available after the clinical examinations:
Crticial Appraisal paper - general comments
1. Lack of systematised approach to critical appraisal and not applying frameworks suggested by common guides- freely available for diagnostic papers in particular.
2. Lack of precision over the use of words- leading to failure to define things accurately or using words that mean other things in the context of critical appraisal
3. Candidates gave general responses rather than linked clearly to the paper and what was contained within it, "interpreting" or reading between the lines rather than reporting on facts written in the paper.
4. Failure to attempt to answer all questions and their subsections
5. Legibility of writing made marking particularly difficult
The candidate performance in the current diet of the FCEM Critical appraisal paper is unusually poor. The College can confirm that the exam setters spent considerable time preparing this paper, including blind piloting of the questions by a number of Consultants. The College is very conscious that it was only the second time this format has been used. The pre-exam review was satisfactory and no major concerns were raised.
All candidate papers where meticulously double marked by a set of four examiners to ensure consistency and minimise variability in marking. The examiners recognised and recorded the full range of possible answers in response to the candidate answers, and re-marked accordingly.
There was extensive post hoc adjudication in the light of the results. It was clear that a number of candidates did not exhibit a systematic approach to this paper, failing to describe reference standards, and having a clear understanding of likelihood ratios and confidence intervals for example. The statistics asked were those normally needed to critically appraise the paper and no unusual tests were discussed (Sensitivity, specificity, confident limits, p values, negative predictive value) .Under standard College procedures, those questions that appeared in any way to be ambiguous were removed (without disadvantaging any candidate) in order to be as fair as possible.
It is clear that the written format requires the precise use of words as the opportunity to seek clarification from the candidate does not exist (compared to the viva). Many answers were unclear and lacked precision in the use of words or detail.
We will publish the detailed answers at the end of the FCEM diet as we have done previously. We will also indicate areas that trainees could usefully focus on and provide more advice about taking the exam in this format.
FCEM Autumn 2010
The College of Emergency Medicine has reviewed the process for the £500 deposit requested to secure a place at the FCEM in autumn 2010. There have been a number of appeals. In order to be fair to all candidates, the College has extended the deadline for payment of the deposit until 5pm on the 5th February 2010. Please note that the increased numbers anticipated will require additional weeks of examinations and it is not possible at the present time to tell candidates when or where the OSCEs and viva's will be held - the College will endeavour to offer candidates the full FCEM examination by end January 2010. .
Ruth Brown Registrar of the College
Management portfolio pilot
The pilot portfolio is available to download here - as is the information for trainers and trainees on how to use it.
Regulations
Candidates who wish to have an MD or PhD accepted for exemption from the CTR must submit a form 6 months in advance of the closing date.
From and including the Autumn 2009, candidates will take the Critical Appraisal as a Short answer question paper sat on the day of the Clinical short answer paper.
Candidates are also advised that it is anticipate that the CTR part of the examination will be moving to a regional administration in 2010.
Applications
The application form for first time applicants is downloadable here.
Resitting applicants will be sent the appropriate form to complete.
Fee for first time applicants
All parts of the exam - £1050
Fees for resitting applicants
Clinical section (SAQ & OSCE) - £550
CTR viva - £125
Appraisal viva - £125
Management viva - £250
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