Talk:Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom

External links

All the links which I have removed basically seem to "exist to sell products or services" which is one of the categories of links which are listed at Wikipedia:External links as "Links normally to be avoided". Could anyone please explain why we should be ignoring this guideline in this case? Cheers --Pak21 14:26, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

The links to 123doc, and its "portal" http://www.mrcppart1.co.uk/ has been removed as they are just selling commercial services.86.141.162.25 15:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

what certificate after MRCP

– == what certificate after MRCP == So many overseas ,hard working doctors,obtained MRCP,while they are working abroad(out side their country of origin),mostly sudanese ,pakistani,egyptian or other nationalities. due to the recent regualtions in postgraduate training,MRCP is now considered as entry point to higher postgraduate medical training,a large number of doctors(overseas)continue training in subspecialities after MRCP. but they need official recognition,iam not sure whether the new scheme of MRCP speciality board examinations BY 2008 will give a chance to those doctors or not.

History

I see that Neil Dewhurst has deleted what he considers to be "historical irrelevancies." Is it not appropriate for an encyclopaedia article to include the history of a topic, as well as the present state of play? It does not serve solely as a source of career advice.

The article does not yet explain how far the MRCP (UK) exam of the three UK Royal Colleges of Physicians has converged with the MRCPI of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. Part One has been identical for a long time: I believe the Part Two exams have been brought together also, but don't know how far this has gone. NRPanikker (talk) 16:00, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Comparing with the US Board

Why compare costs of a UK exam with a US exam? All other things are not equal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.21.5.180 (talk) 20:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The old London MRCP examination

"Comment from personal experience" transcribed from the talk page on Maurice Pappworth.

I cannot put any of this into Papworth's page, nor into the page on the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, but I hope these comments will help. I attended the RPGMS in the early 1970's, and it was clear to me that things were being done to patients without their knowledge and there was no ethics committee at all. I brought this up, respectfully, but the result was damaging, to say the least. With regard to Papworth, he was indeed an angry man, and rightly so, but he was not a great medical teacher, nor did he ever claim to be one. I saw and heard him in action, and what he drummed into his classes was that the MRACP exams were a trial of gamesmanship, that had nothing to do with the good practice of medicine. He said that he would show his class how to pass the oral exams, and he did it well. I was an usher at those exams at the Royal Free Hospital. The applicants were expected to make "Snap diagnoses" literally from the end of the bed, in what I termed "Smart Alec medicine." As far as racism was concerned, it was not limited to Jews either. Once at the exams at the RFH I saw 2 examiners mocking a Pakistani candidate and deliberately confusing him with misleading and confusing questions. As it happened, the President of the Royal College of Medicine was also the chief physician of the RFH at the time and the chief censor (examiner). Prof Sherlock was a world renoun authority on liver disease and highly respected by all. She was also a very direct lady who stood no nonsense and she set very high standards for the practice of medicine and for the behaviour of doctors. She stood and listened to the disgraceful matter in progress and beconed to me. "Who are you"? I told her. "What is happening here" (The candidate was by then trembling and near to tears). I told her what I had seen and she stepped in and said to the 2 examiners "Gentleman, it is tea time". "One moment, we are not quite finished here" came the reply. "Oh yes you are, finished for now and forever.". She took the candidate aside and apologised and asked him to come to her the next day for her morning ward round. At the end she said "Congratulations, doctor, you have passed". I was so proud of her, but the examination of candidates continued to be a demeaning and inappropriate process for decades. Historygypsy (talk) 03:24, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

The above account contains a couple of typos: the exam described was the MRCP, not the MRACP (which is its Australian equivalent) and Sheila Sherlock was Vice-President, not President, of the Royal College of Physicians. Similar tales could probably be told of the Edinburgh exam. NRPanikker (talk) 00:20, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

MRCP (UK) in Edinburgh - early days

Dr Herbert Ho Ping Kong recently described his experience of 48 years ago:

To earn my MRCP - a diploma of Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom - I had to pass two exams. Two weeks after arriving in London I breezed through the multiple choice segment without any problems. Arriving from London to Edinburgh I encountered Dr Batty, a stately, imperious Scottish examiner for two case studies involving live patients.

"Dr Ho, where are you from?" he began.

"Kingston, Jamaica, sir."

"Ah ... A great place. And how long have you been here, Dr. Ho?"

"Two weeks, sir, in Edinburgh."

"Hmmm," he said, "Not long enough."

We were off to an inauspicious start. The patient presented to me was a 50-year-old woman. I began by examining the spleen and found it massively enlarged - I'd seen about 50 similar cases in Jamaica and was, as usual, confident about my diagnosis. After no more than 15 seconds I said, "Sir, this woman has massive splenomegaly [a very big spleen]. There are only four things that could cause it. In Africa or Malaysia, it could be kala azar or malaria, but in Scotland, it's going to be either myelofibrosis or chronic myeloid leukaemia."

Dr Batty turned to me. "I did note that you had not been here long enough."

I said, "Sir, if you show me the patient's blood slide, I will confirm the diagnosis."

So he passed me the slide and the problem was indeed transparent.

"Sir, the slide clearly shows a leukoerythroblastic picture (a combination of abnormal red and white blood cells). This patient has myelofibrosis." It had taken me 30 seconds.

He said, "Doctor, you have not been here long enough."

As a result, he failed me - the first and last time I had failed an exam in my life. I was devastated and deeply despondent.

.....

Was it racism? I really don't know. Perhaps Dr Batty genuinely believed that one had to be immersed in British culture and medicine for at least a year before earning the MRCP designation. The next day I was summoned to an audience with Dr John Macleod, chairman of the department of medicine at Western General Hospital and editor of a definitive textbook used at the time, Davidson's Principles and Practice of Medicine.

He asked me to sit down and said, "On behalf of the Royal College of Physicians, I need to apologise to you, Dr Ho. You did not really fail the exam. Unfortunately, the mark has been formally entered and we can't undo it. What we can do, however, is remove Dr Batty from the examining board, and that has already been done. Moreover, for the duration of your stay, we'd like to offer you a position as a paid tutor, at a salary of six pounds per week. In 1970 terms, that was a small fortune.

I accepted the position and his comments with gratitude.

The above was extracted from "The Art of Medicine: Healing and the Limits of Technology by Herbert Ho Ping Kong and Michael Posner, ECW Press 2014, ISBN 978 1770905665 The late Dr DMF Batty was a dinosaur of the old Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. His college obituary is silent about this, but that of his colleague James Innes says he was often paired as an examiner with "the outwardly fearsome Dr Batty whose reputation for failing aspiring candidates had spread far to the East of Suez." NRPanikker (talk) 19:53, 12 August 2019 (UTC) NRPanikker (talk) 20:33, 12 August 2019 (UTC)