Company handling CFPC exams lost some residents’ tests

[indefatigable]

Mississauga, Ont. – As though the stress of taking an exam during a pandemic weren’t enough, some residents who took the College of Family Physicians of Canada exam this fall have had their test results lost.

Prometric, the U.S.-based testing administration company handling the exams, told some residents in an email that it’s unable to retrieve and score their tests due to technical problems. As a result, it said, those residents will need to take the test again in its entirety.

The college confirmed in an email to the Canadian Healthcare Network that 18 individuals from five testing centres were impacted by the glitch.

This development comes after multiple reports from residents saying there were other glitches with the online exam process, including some being given less time than others and problems with highlighting functionality.

“We started to pick up really early on that there was a large number of people . . . that were having these difficulties with timing on the exam,” says Dr. Paul Dhillon, one of the co-founders of the Review Course in Family Medicine, who observed residents airing grievances about the exam in a Facebook group.

Commenting through the group, some residents reported getting only three hours and 45 minutes to complete the exam, while others received four hours and 15 minutes, with a further 15 minutes allotted for a break.

“The issue, then, I was noticing was that there was no one there to answer right away,” added Dr. Dhillon. “And some people were off site, some people were on site. And then the amount of stress they went through, I can’t even imagine.”

The inconsistency in time allotted was an error on Prometric’s part, where one of the multiple versions of the exam used was published with a 225 minute time limit, rather than the 255 minutes it should have been, noted a spokesperson from the college in an email.

“We know that writing exams is stressful enough without adding technical glitches,” added Dr. Brent Kvern, director of certification and examinations. “The CFPC regrets the added stress that this situation has created. We will continue communicating with affected individuals.”

Dr. James MacKinnon took the test at a location in Nova Scotia. When he started his exam, he noticed he was given three hours and 45 minutes to complete it. Thinking he may have misunderstood his allotted time, he decided to continue taking the exam without notifying the proctor because he didn’t want to risk wasting precious minutes.

“If I go and put up an argument with somebody, I recognize that the exam time is just going to keep going and I’m not going to get that back and if I’m wrong, I’ll just lose that time and potentially I could damage the end result of the exam,” he says.

After exiting the exam, he found out from a friend that other residents had experienced similar issues. After emailing his residency supervisor and the college, he thought it would only be an issue if his exam weren’t successful.

But then, earlier this week, Dr. MacKinnon received an email from Prometric saying his was one of the exams that had been lost. “My first response, I was just nauseated. I mean today I just don’t know how I feel . . . whether it’s anger, frustration, disappointment.”

“There have been so many exams that I’ve written over the past six years and this was really the light at the end of the tunnel. . . . And especially with the fact that it’s been postponed for the past six months, which I recognize is out of anyone’s control, it just hurts.”

In an email to the Canadian Healthcare Network, a spokesperson for Prometric said it regrets any negative impact the technical problems have caused and that the college is taking the lead in assessing the needs of the residents who will need to retake the exam.

“In the recent exam administration for the CFPC testing program, Prometric experienced a technical issue in our production environment that inhibited our ability to transmit, store and score the examination responses for 18 individual test takers,” the email said. “Upon our awareness of the issue, we immediately engaged our technical resources in an effort to retrieve the test taker results; our actions proved unsuccessful. We did identify the root cause of the issue and implemented a resolution that rectified the problem, so that future test takers would not see a recurrence of the issue.”

Dr. Francine Lemire, the college’s executive director and chief executive officer added that the college has reached out to every affected candidate. “We will be offering those individuals support and establishing immediate re-writes of the exam. We are also continuing to discuss the required follow-up with our exam vendor.”

https://www.canadianhealthcarenetwork.ca/physicians/news/company-handling-cfpc-exams-lost-some-residents-tests-60570?utm_source=EmailMarketing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Physician_Newsflash