the
medicalstudent The voice of London’s Medical Students
November 2011
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Oversubscription Hits UKFPO Sanjeev Ramachandran
The  UKFPO  has  confirmed  that,  once  again,  this  year’s  national  recruit- ment  process  for  the  Foundation  Pro- gramme  has  been  oversubscribed.  An  overhaul  of  the  Foundation  Pro- gramme  Application  System  (FPAS)  is  expected  to  be  phased  in  for  the  2012-Â13  cycle.  With  such  high  levels  of  competition  for  places,  it  is  hoped  that  the  new  application  process  will  help  alleviate  the  UKFPO’s  burdens. With  this  year’s  batch  of  Founda- tion  Programme  applications  sent  off,  finalists  have  done  what  they  can  to  secure  a  job  for  next  August.  Professor  Derek  Gallen,  UKFPO  National  Direc- tor,  said:  ‘I  am  confident  that  despite  the  programme  being  oversubscribed  once  again,  all  eligible  applicants  will  be  placed  in  jobs  by  the  start  of  the  Foundation  Programme  in  2012’.  Wor- ryingly,  however,  one  London  founda- tion  school  in  particular  has  received Â
a  significant  increase  in  applications  this  year.  A  contingency  plan  has  been  implemented  by  the  UKFPO  to  allow  them  to  be  processed  in  time,  whereby  the  surplus  of  applicants  will  be  ran- domly  allocated  to  another  founda- tion  school  for  scoring.  The  UKFPO  assures  students  that  this  will  not  af- fect  the  outcome  of  their  applications.  ‘Strict  quality  management  controls,  with  schools  blind  scoring  the  same  quality  control  applications,  have  dem- onstrated  that  there  is  a  strong  corre- lation  between  scores  across  the  UK’.  Despite  the  UKFPO’s  statements,  this  year’s  FPAS  has  provoked  discontent  amongst  the  applicants,  with  one  final  year  saying  that  ‘it  seems  like  more  of  a  lottery  than  ever’.  With  competition  for  places  unlikely  to  dampen  in  the  coming  years,  these  events  do  beg  a  deeper  question  -  is  FPAS  really  ready  to  deal  with  a  consistently  high  number  of  candidates  in  as  fair  a  way  possible? FPAS  2012  is,  in  fact,  the  last  of  its  kind.  For  the  past  few  years,  applica-Â
tions  have  been  scored  largely  based  on  responses  to  ‘white  space’  questions.  They  are  designed  to  assess  the  skills  and  competencies  needed  for  the  Foun- dation  Programme  and  have  t urned  into  a  yet  another  hoop  generations  of  final  years  have  had  to  jump  through.  The  current  process  has  attracted  a  great  deal  of  criticism,  not  least  from  medi- cal  students  themselves,  who  often  felt  it  was  an  exercise  in  creative  writing  rather  than  a  valid  way  of  selecting  the  best  doctors.  The  most  relevant  criti- cism,  however,  is  that  this  system  is  highly  resource-Âintensive,  requiring  a  large  number  of  markers.  This,  in  turn,  leads  to  an  element  of  subjectivity  in  the  marking.  The  competition  is  such  that  even  a  couple  of  points  either  way  can  decide  whether  applicants  get  into  their  first  choice  foundation  school  or  not.  Given  the  years  of  difficult  train- ing  final  years  have  had  to  endure,  they  are  well  within  reason  to  expect  only  the  fairest  of  application  processes.  So  what  is  the  answer?  Over  the  past Â
two  years,  the  Improving  Selection  to  the  Foundation  Programme  (ISFP)  project  has  been  in  the  process  of  de- signing  and  a  trialling  a  brand  new  ap- plication  system.  This  year  they  ran  a  full  scale  trial  of  the  new  process  at  17  UK  medical  schools  alongside  the  cur- rent  system  and  the  outcome  of  the  t rial  has  in  fact  decided  the  fate  of  FPAS.  Starting  from  next  year,  the  ‘white  space’  questions  will  be  scrapped,  to  be  replaced  by  a  system  that  is  de- signed  to  be  more  objective  and  less  resource-Âintensive.  FPAS  2013  will  consist  of  two  elements  -  the  Educa- tional  Performance  Measure  (EPM)  and  a  Situation  Judgement  Test  (SJT).  The  EPM  essentially  measures  one’s  academic  and  clinical  performance  at  medical  school.  It  takes  into  account  the  students’  ranking  at  medical  school  exams  (based  on  which  decile  they  are  placed  in),  any  extra  degrees  they  may  have  done  and  their  prizes,  publica- tions  and  national  poster  presentations.  (cont’d  on  page  2)
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