All surgery students from five universities fail exam

An investigation will be launched in South Africa to look into whether there was anything irregular in the common final examination that has been ‘shockingly’ failed by all would-be surgeons from five universities, writes Bongani Nkosi for IOL.

All candidates from the University of the Witwatersrand, University of Cape Town, University of Pretoria, Walter Sisulu University and the University of the Free State who received their Fellowship of the College of Surgeons (FCS) exam results a week ago failed. The FCS exams are administered by the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa (CMSA), which ensures that universities produce quality medical graduates. Only candidates from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University and Stellenbosch University passed the exams. Out of 46 candidates from eight universities that wrote the FCS, only 15 passed.

“We remain shocked at this particular result and very concerned about it,” Dr Flavia Senkubuge, president of the CMSA, said. “We usually have round about an 80% and above pass rate for the college of surgery for the written examination. This time around we had a 44% pass rate,” Senkubuge said. She said an internal moderation found the results to be correct. An external moderation was now being done by international surgery experts.
Full report on the IOL site