The scoring process

The Anatomy Spot Questions go through a rigorous marking system with members of the Anatomy Committee, who write the questions for this segment of the examination. Each Spot Question is marked by one member of the sub-committee in the first instance. Once all questions have been marked, the sub-committee comes together as a whole and reviews each individual response for each question, ensuring marking is fair and accurate. Candidate information is de-identified for this process.

Following each examination, the performance of each individual question is statistically analysed and questions which are statistical outliers are reviewed by the relevant committee (anatomy, pathology or physiology). Following review these outlying questions may be removed or re-marked before the entire examination is statistically analysed again to determine the final pass mark (as well as the individual pass mark and minimum standard mark for each component).

Once all the questions have been checked (following an initial statistical analysis to identify any issues), the entire examination is re-analysed and new pass marks for each component, minimum standard scores for each component and the overall pass mark is then generated.

These results are then presented to the Surgical Science Examination and Clinical Examination Committee to be ratified. Applications for special consideration are discussed and results are updated (if relevant) following a consensus agreement.

Once this is completed, the results are finalised, feedback forms generated and prepared for distribution.