WEST AFRICAN COLLEGE OF SURGEONS FELLOWSHIP EXAMINATIONS
Olatosi OJ FWACS,
Secretary-General, West African College of Surgeons.
Editor-in-Chief.
E-mail: tola_olatosi@yahoo.com
The West African College of Surgeons conducts its fellowship examinations at three levels – Primary, Part 1 and Part 2 – in various countries of the West African sub-region in April and October of every year. The Primary fellowship examination is a written examination aimed at detecting candidates with good basic medical sciences and pathophysiology competencies. Passing the primary examination is a pre-requisite for admission into all the various faculties of the college which include surgery, obstetrics & gynaecology, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, dentistry, radiology and anaesthesia.
The Part 1 and Part 2 fellowship examinations assess the cognitive knowledge, skills and best practices of the candidate in theory, clinical examination, viva voce, and thesis defence. The candidates are trained in accredited tertiary hospitals in West African with the full complement of staff, necessary equipment and following prescribed structured format with log books to ensure that the skills required are acquired before the candidates are approved to sit the examinations. The College provides revision courses which are compulsory for candidates before appearing for each level of the examination. After successfully passing the Part 1 fellowship examination, every candidate preparing for the Part 2 fellowship examination shall attend a research methodology course and the Medical Manuscript Writing workshop which are compulsory. These two courses enable them write good research proposal, conduct well-structured research on relevant topics, write up and defend their thesis, as well as publish the results of their research in indexed journal. It is also compulsory for them to attend the Health Management & Ethics course which enables them to manage manpower and resources optimally while at the same time being sticklers for ethics. There is also provision for candidates preparing for the Part 2 fellowship examinations to undergo one-year split site training abroad in specialized centres in Europe and the United States to acquire knowledge, skills and best practices necessary in their respective specialties. All the fellowship examinations of the West African College of Surgeons are highly subscribed.
The West African College of Surgeons has numerous international collaborations for training and skills acquisition in Europe and the United States as well as such centres in the West African sub-region. This has helped in improving the exposure of our candidates to modern skills acquisition. It also has lateral recognition of similar fellowship examinations in the sub-region such as the Nation Postgraduate College of Nigeria, the Ghana Medical College and the Francophone equivalent examinations.
The challenges before the West African College of Surgeons include how to improve on the operative skills and competencies of our candidates and how to improve on the pass rates at the various levels of the fellowship examinations. As shown in the work of Ajao et al1 in this issue of the Journal of the West African College of Surgeons, the average pass rate is below 50% in both Part 1 and Part 2 general surgery examination of the College as opposed to above 70% pass rate in the final general surgery examination in the United States2. Ajao et al1 also showed that the clinical examinations were responsible for most of the failures at the West African College of Surgeons fellowship examinations in general surgery – a valid pointer to the need to improve the clinical and operative skills of the candidates for the fellowship examinations of the West African College of Surgeons.
REFERENCES
- Ajao OG, Ajao OO, Ugwu BT, Yawe KDT, Ezeome ER. Factors determining the results of the examination of the West African College of Surgeons in general surgery. J West Afr Coll Surg. 2014;4(4):1-
- De Virgilio C, Yaghoubian A, Kaji A, Collins JC, Deveney K, Dolich M et al. .
- Predicting performance on the American Board of Surgery Qualifying and Certifying examinations: a multi-institutional study. Arch Surg. 2010; 145:852-856.