Rejected petition Public inquiry into institutional racism at the Royal College of General Practitioners

To be a GP there is standardised process of recruitment, training and assessment. One of the parts of final assessment called Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA) has obviously and significantly different pass rate between white local graduates and Black and Ethnic Minority Graduates.

RCGP figures indicate that the failure rate for IMGs (international medical graduates) taking the CSA exam is at 63.2%, compared with 9.4% of UK graduates.

Many GP trainees failed this exam 4 times, this means at the end of 3 years of training and education due to a possibly flawed exam system many doctors are left with no career prospects. They continue to endure immense strain on their family, personal anxiety, stress and financial ruin having spent tens of thousands of pounds on exam fees and courses. Training a doctor to this level costs the UK tax payer £0.5m per doctor.

Each attempt costs the trainee £1694 the exam is very subjective and another £800 to appeal the result.