The paper demonstrates that candidates continue to show evidence of true improvement in performance up to at least the 10th attempt at MRCP(UK) Part 1, although there are individual differences in the starting level, the rate of improvement and the maximum level that can be achieved. The authors point out that while this does not seem to support a fixed number of attempts at an examination, unlimited attempts are also difficult to justify because of the ever increasing role that luck must play with increasing numbers of resits.

14 June 2012

As a consequence of change in medical, educational and regulatory practice, MRCP(UK) successfully modified the international PACES examination in 2009. This brief paper explains the rationale for change and summarises the development and implementation process.

June 2011

A systematic review and meta-analysis of ethnicity and academic performance in UK-trained doctors and medical students, which includes and references MRCP(UK) data. The paper concludes that UK-trained doctors and medical students from minority ethnic groups tend to underperform academically compared with their white counterparts, but that it is not clear why this might be.

8 March 2011

The MRCP(UK) PACES examination assesses skills of relevance to the practice and delivery of high quality clinical care and is the leading international postgraduate summative assessment of this kind. In 2009, the examination was revised, and this article describes those revisions, focussing on the clinical skills assessed.

3 March 2011

The authors of this study tested the hypothesis that SEM is a better measure of the quality of an assessment, because it is unaffected by the ability range or number of candidates taking an examination.

2 June 2010

This study examines the impact of group discussion and candidate performance data on the judgments made by experts during the process of standard-setting. The paper provides a detailed analysis of the relationship between question difficulty and the degree of changes experts make in their judgments after group discussion of discrepancies.

1 January 2009

The aim of this study is to assess the performance of UK graduates who have taken MRCP(UK) Part 1, Part 2 and PACES (Practical Assessment of Clinical Examination Skills) and explore the reasons for the differences between medical schools. 

14 February 2008 

Male students and students from ethnic minorities have been reported to underperform in undergraduate medical examinations. The aim of this study was to assess effects of ethnicity and gender for UK medical graduates on pass rates in the MRCP(UK) Examination sat in the UK in 2003-4.

3 May 2007

Clinical examinations require that judgements of candidates are made by experienced examiners. A potential vulnerability of any clinical examinations is that examiners differ in their relative leniency or stringency. This study looks at the paired judgements made by examiners in the MRCP(UK) Part 2 Clinical Examination (PACES) and calculates examiner stringency.

18 August 2006

This paper looks at marker questions (questions re-used unchanged in several examinations) in  the MRCP(UK) Part 1 Examination between 1985 and 2002 to assess whether standards have changed. The authors conclude that there was a sudden, relatively steep decline in the performance of graduates from UK medical schools taking the MRCP(UK) Part 1 examination. The reasons for this are not clear and are not an artefact of changes in the mix of overseas and UK candidates, or changes in the time after qualifying of first or subsequent sittings of the examination, but they do have implications for medical education.

18 July 2005

For an examination to be robust, it must be valid, reliable and practical. This review concludes that the reliability of the MRCP(UK) Examination was maintained over the period 1984–2001.

27 June 2003