What Was The College

"What was the College’s involvement in the development of the Medical Training Application System? With the current concerns about the MTAS system many paediatricians are asking • “What was the RCPCH’s involvement in its development?” and • “Could the RCPCH have done more to prevent the problems?” This paper gives the background in an attempt to address these questions. About eighteen months ago we were first informed by MMC Team that Colleges would be involved in deriving criteria for selection. We were not given any guidance initially but we did establish a working group to start thinking about this. Throughout our involvement, we were informed by the MMC team that candidates would be selected primarily on the potential they showed to become a consultant paediatrician rather than based on past experience. We were told that past experience and career progression should be judged mainly by the demonstration of competences achieved rather than by time served. We had difficulties with this because we did not know of any evidence that trainees might have to demonstrate their competence apart from the MRCPCH examination. We were aware of the work of Professor Fiona Patterson and met with her on a couple of occasions to seek her advice. Fiona Patterson is a professor of organisational psychology and had worked with the General Practitioners on methods of selection into training. We held a Workshop to discuss the process to which a member of Fiona Patterson’s team attended as well as representatives from other Colleges. We decided on the attributes that were important for paediatrics and also ranked these. We also derived some ideas about how these attributes could be tested in an application form and at interview. By the time we had got this far, in June 2006, Fiona Paterson had become the head of the Selection Methodology team who were employed by MMC to develop the person specifications and application forms to enter specialty training. We shared our work to date with her and her team. We were advised that the person specifications for all specialties had to be identical; therefore although all the attributes we had selected were included in the person specification there was no prioritisation in the way they were presented of those we felt important for paediatrics. None of the other work we had undertaken was incorporated into the final process. We expressed many concerns about the inclusion at each level in the essential criteria of fixed a time of experience in paediatrics, with no attempt to distinguish between training and non training experience, but despite strong protestations about how this would be judged we could not get this changed. We were advised prioritisation of attributes would be addressed in the scoring of questions. We were asked about a couple of questions on the application form and how these should be varied for the different levels of application. Whilst we did make some alterations to these questions relating to our chosen attributes, we were doing this without having any knowledge about the factual content of the application form which we presumed would enquire about candidates’ undergraduate and postgraduate career history

and achievements. We were never made aware that ‘competency’ as judged by the ability to answer scenario questions would be marked in isolation from the career history. We were not told how questions would be weighted, nor how the overall application form would be scored. We recognised that it would be very difficult to score responses to questions and we discussed the dangers of plagiarism within and outside our College. We felt unable to influence the process in a way that would overcome these concerns. At no point did we see the complete application form. We did ask to see it but were advised that since it required registration and entry of a GMC number it was not possible to do this. Although we were sent the slides that the MTAS team used in their training this did not enlighten us any further. The only aspect we did feel our advice was taken was on which parts of the MRCPCH were needed for which levels of entry. Throughout the process we were advised that selection is a Deanery responsibility and not a College responsibility and that it has always been the case that Person Specifications and interviews for posts were undertaken according to Deanery guidelines and not according to any standardised College standards or process. Though not entirely reassured by this we, like most Colleges, assumed the process would nevertheless run better than has since transpired. We also had confidence that our Members at a local level would use common sense, where they were able to, to ensure that the right people were appointed, as they have always done in the past. One of the problems with the MTAS application form was that they were often not able to exercise that discretion. As we hope you will be aware from our bulletins, we are keen to ensure that the right people are selected and that concerns about the application system are addressed. We are working through the Academy of Royal Medical Colleges and the review team that has been established to address these concerns. One of the key issues of that review will be to ensure that the process is able to fairly discriminate between applicants and to ensure that those candidates who should be short-listed are offered interviews.

Dr Patricia Hamilton President Dr Mary McGraw Vice President Training and Assessment"