The GEM Year Clinical Competency Assessment (CCA) tests your emerging abilities in the skills and applied knowledge that underpin clinical practice. Your skills and knowledge will build throughout the GEM year, preparing you to transition to your 2^nd year of study (Year 3) and beyond.

What does the GEM Year CCA consist of?

There are 10 stations in the GEM Year CCA. They will test your competence in clinical, bioscience, anatomical, and communication skills. The skills will be taught in consultation and communication sessions and other Early Clinical Experience activities, whilst the knowledge is drawn from across the learning weeks.

The CCA Assessment Page on 1medinfo provides more detailed information on the CCA including station types, marking domains and useful revision resources.

Please note: students in Years 1 and 2 of the 5-Year Programme receive an email the night prior to the CCA Assessment with brief information on the stations. Students on the GEM Programme will not receive information on the stations the evening prior to the assessment. As the GEM Programme is a smaller cohort, it is possible to quarantine students from each other while everyone completes the assessment. As the Year 1 and Year 2 cohorts are much larger, the CCAs run all day. Consequently, there is no way to quarantine all students who sat the assessment in the morning from those who sit the exam later in the day. To ensure fairness to students sitting the assessment in the morning, all students in Years 1 and 2 receive a CCA brief the evening prior to the assessment.  

 CCA Marking

The marks for the GEM Year CCA are awarded according to strictly defined criteria and either marked by a checklist or a global score, as appropriate for the specific station.

Stations that do not involve communicating with/examining simulated patients may be marked using a checklist. These stations are reviewed by a panel of academics who, through a standard setting process, determine how well a just passing student would score on the checklist.

A global rating scale is an examiner’s judgement of a student’s overall performance in that station. Students will also be marked on sub-domain scales, which provides additional formative feedback and are selected to match the station content. The full list of rating scales (and their respective elements) are available on CCA Assessment page of 1medinfo/ The global rating scale reflects how skilfully and competently you performed the station overall, it allows examiners to take into account aspects of your performance not captured by the sub-domains, and how you integrated the various components. To pass these stations, a student must demonstrate satisfactory competency or above on the global rating scale as shown below (with further details of each descriptor available on 1medinfo.

EXCELLENT DEMONSTRATION OF COMPETENCY   GOOD DEMONSTRATION OF COMPETENCY   SATISFACTORY DEMONSTRATION OF COMPETENCY   FAILURE TO DEMONSTRATE COMPETENCY   MAJOR FAILURE TO DEMONSTRATE COMPETENCY

 CCA Outcomes

In order to pass the CCA in the GEM Year, students must demonstrate competency in at least 6 stations out of the 10.

OVERALL OSCE OUTCOME	Criteria
Distinction	demonstrating competency in all 10* stations, with 6 or more judged to be Excellent
Honours	demonstrating competency in at least 9* stations out of 10, with 5 or  more stations judged to be Excellent
Satisfactory	demonstrating competency in at least 6* stations out of 10 (Satisfactory or above)
Unsatisfactory	unable to demonstrate competency in at least 6* stations (i.e. more than 4* failed stations)

*reduce by 1 if a station is required to be removed from cohort following   recommendation. 

GEM Year students who fail, will re-sit the CCA in July.  Students who fail their re-sit opportunity are automatically excluded from the Programme unless acceptable mitigating circumstances are submitted for consideration and are approved by the Mitigating Circumstances Panel.

Conduct in the CCA

• Before being allowed to enter the examination, you must present your University Library (ID) Card which shows your name, photograph and registration number. If you fail to produce your library card, you may not be allowed to sit the examination.
• Do not take mobile phones, pagers or any other form of electronic communication with you. Any student found with a mobile phone or pager etc. (whether switched on or not), either in the quarantine area or during the examination, will be excluded from the examination and receive a mark of zero. Leave them at home!
• Do not attempt to communicate with other students who may have undertaken the CCA at an earlier time in the day. Whilst every effort is made to ensure that students are not able to discuss the examination outside their quarantine area, it is your responsibility not to cheat. Students found in communication with others who have just taken the CCA face exclusion from the examination.
• Ensure that the invigilators are aware of your movements at all times. If you need to leave the quarantine area for any reason, seek permission from the relevant personnel first. Failure to do so may result in your exclusion from the examination.

For further information please see: Clinical Competency Assessments (CCAs) – GEM