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Trainees face wait till January to sit exams after last minute cancellation for royal funeral

BMJ 2022; 378 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o2259 (Published 16 September 2022) Cite this as: BMJ 2022;378:o2259
  1. Adele Waters
  1. The BMJ

Doctors whose postgraduate exams were cancelled at the 11th hour last week were told they had two options: wait until next year or fly out to sit the exam at an international test centre. They were offered alternative locations in Iceland, Hungary, Poland, Malta, Greece, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, or Ireland.

Up to 77 UK doctors expecting to sit their part 1 examination for the membership of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (MRCOG) on 19 September were initially told their exam would not be affected by the Queen’s funeral.

Pearson VUE, a private exam provider that has contracts with several royal colleges to run postgraduate medical exams, notified the doctors on 12 September, within days of the Queen’s death, that their exam would go ahead.

But the next morning the RCOG notified them that the exam provider had made the decision to pause its operations across all UK testing facilities on the funeral date, as a sign of respect. Therefore their exam would not take place, but they would be able to sit …

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