What commitment do we ask for?

Availability of examiners

We expect examiners to make themselves available for at least six days a year: five days examining, plus a compulsory calibration day in the autumn. You will have a choice of at least five calibration days, spread over different days and different weeks.

Examinations are held throughout the year in blocks of two or three days – generally between Tuesday and Thursday. We will circulate exam dates for six-month periods about three or four months ahead. We will ask you to indicate your choice of dates, whether you wish to examine on single or consecutive days and any other preferences. We will allocate days based on this and send you an email confirming the dates we've allocated to you.

Examiner timetable at the PLAB 2 exam

Exams are held at our purpose-built clinical assessment centre in Manchester and you must arrive at 8 am in time for an 8.05 am briefing. We run one circuit of candidates before lunch and one in the afternoon. We normally end the day by 4.15 pm. You will usually examine the same station all day, but from time to time you may examine more than one station.

Because the exam is set at the level of the successful completion of the first year of the Foundation Programme (F1), we expect examiners to be able to examine in most stations. We won't necessarily allocate examiners to stations in their own specialty.

We allow 30 minutes calibration for each station in the morning. You'll pair up with another examiner, giving you the opportunity to seek advice if you are at all uncertain about the marking scheme.

See a sample objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) station in our PLAB 2 guide.

A typical day would be: