What are the MRCPH Clinical scenario working groups?
These groups meet face-to-face three times a year across the UK to develop new scenarios and review existing scenarios for use in the MRCPCH Clinical exams.
There are four groups, each focused on one scenario type:
- Child Development
- Communication Skills
- History
- Video
Each group has an appointed Group Lead and Vice-Lead who guide group members as they review current material and begin to develop new scenarios. These groups do work collaboratively and share expertise when required but the groups tend to work independently on their specific scenario type and we recommend choosing to join the group that interests you the most for this reason.
The scenarios that are written and reviewed by these groups are used in the MRCPCH Clinical Examinations both within the UK and overseas centres. The Psychometrics team generate scenario performance feedback from the exams alongside the feedback obtained from Senior Examiners examining on the exam days. All this information is provided to the Clinical Scenario Groups to help members to understand the success of particular scenarios and to develop scenarios that may have underperformed.
Who can join a group?
Working group members must:
- ST5 or above (adjusted in August 2023 to align with Progress+).
- Member in good standing with the College.
- Have an interest in medical education.
- Be willing to travel to join two out of the three RCPCH Examination and Assessment Boards which are hosted across the UK.
- Respond to emails in a timely manner.
- Willing to support the other Clinical Scenario Working Groups if necessary.
Additional opportunities that can be done remotely
As well as our face-to-face meetings, we often ask group members to review scenarios remotely. (We need a large number of scenarios for each exam diet, so there's often a time pressure to review them all!) Of course, group members don't have to do these additional reviews each time, but we encourage everyone to try do this at least once a year.
In 2024 we hope to set up a series of online meetings to facilitate these remote review. These will be optional for current group members, and mandatory for those who have not yet attended a face-to-face meeting.
We're also starting to develop a comprehensive training programme for all current and new group members.
How to get involved
We hope you're interested in joining one of our clinical scenario working groups! The meetings are friendly and productive. Members love knowing how they are supporting our clinical exams, and doing their bit to ensure the MRCPCH Clinical exam is robust.
Get involved - email clinicalscenarios@rcpch.ac.uk
- Usage policy for RCPCH exam questions
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- Copyright of scenarios written for the MRCPCH clinical exams belongs to the RCPCH. By submitting your contribution (includes clinical images and videos) you hereby assign the copyright to The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and all other rights in and to the contribution.
- This assignment of rights means that you have given RCPCH the exclusive right to publish and reproduce the contribution in print and all other forms of media, in any edition, revision, or other form, in all languages, throughout the world, and the right to license others to do the same.
- Contributors must not divulge examination scenarios to outside organisations or any other individuals who are not directly engaged in the delivery of the relevant examinations. Any infringement of this rule must be reported immediately to the relevant staff member at the RCPCH.
- Contributors hereby agree not to publish any material which they have prepared or reviewed in connection with the MRCPCH examinations for non-College products.