Clinical Skills Assessment
– Royal College Of General Practitioners
Context
The Royal College of General Practitioners is the professional body for general practitioners in the United Kingdom. The RCGP represents and supports GPs on key issues including licensing, education, training, research and clinical standards. It is the largest of the medical royal colleges, with over 50,000 members.
Challenge
The national licensing exam for UK General Practitioners requires the deployment of medical role players to provide reliable portrayals of patients in immersive, true-to-life simulated surgeries. As the UK’s largest exam of its kind, the Clinical Skills Assessment involves three examination circuits running simultaneously.
The Solution
Alchemist developed a large pool of medical role players who are trained, maintained, and curated to mirror changes and trends in the current patient population. GPs in the RCGP’s Case-Writing Group shape the briefs, with the help of role players, to make them as realistic as possible. A bespoke database holding role player’s physical and behavioural characteristics ensures the correct matching of character briefs. A calibration process ensures that role players performing as the same character on different exam circuits are prepared in order to deliver near-identical portrayals.
The impact
- Over 45,000+ GPs assessed since 2007.
- Immersive, true-to-life simulated surgeries.
- Our method is now recognised as the industry standard by other medical colleges.
- Pool of 550 medical role players.
“Interact has a proven track record of providing very reliable portrayals in support of the Clinical Skills Assessment… I can confirm that their processes for role player selection, training, quality assurance, remediation, and (if required) de-selection are absolutely robust… they go the extra mile to ensure their customer’s needs are met in full.” – Professor Rich Withnall, RCGP Clinical Lead for MRCGP Clinical Skills Assessment
