News: Online assessments

29 January 2010

Loophole in assessments.

Having been involved in overseeing FY2 Doctors in general practice, it has always struck me as unusual that when you have completed an online assessment, there is no confirmatory email sent back to you. Given that most FY2s will know the email addresses of their educational and/or clinical supervisors, and this is usually all that is required to post a report, it would be fairly straightforward for them to submit false assessments if they wished to do so.

The case you reported (September 2009 edition) highlights a serious loophole in the assessment process and is likely to represent further undetected cases. Perhaps the foundation programme should consider firstly tightening up the log in process for making assessments and, in addition, sending a simple email to confirm that an assessment has been posted, which could alert a supervisor if something has been falsely posted in their name.

Dr Simon Hodes

We have passed your concerns on to the task group set up by the UK Foundation Programme Office to look at content and security of the e-portfolio.

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