FRCA

The Final FRCA is more fully called the Final Examination of the Diploma of Fellowship of the Royal College of Anaesthetists.

Trainee anaesthetists in the United Kingdom are required to pass this examination during ST3-4, otherwise training may be delayed or stopped.

The examination is open to higher trainees in anaesthesia, those working in approved training posts, those who have recently left an approved training post, and other doctors on approval of the Royal College of Anaesthetists who have passed the primary FRCA or an equivalent exempting qualification within the last two years. There are a maximum of six attempts at this examination, and there is a robust system in place to support candidates in the UK training system before they get to this point.

The exam takes the form of a written Short-Answer Question (SAQ) paper (3 hours, 12 questions), and a Multiple-Choice Question (MCQ) paper (3 hours, 60 five stem questions covering medicine, surgery, intensive care, pain and basic sciences and 30 Single Best Answer clinical questions) which can be attempted at several regional centres in the UK (such as Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff, Manchester and London). The MCQ examination now contains several questions with the Single Best Answer format.

Candidates who pass both the MCQ and the SAQ are invited to the Structured Oral Examination (SOE) ("Viva voce"), in Churchill House, London, the headquarters of the Royal College of Anaesthetists.

The SOE component of the examination consists of two structured oral examinations: the first (clinical) consists of 10 minutes to review a prepared series of clinical data, followed by 40 minutes of questioning; the second (basic science) consists of 30 minutes of questioning.

The examination is now staged into two distinct, separable components. The written paper must be passed prior to attempting the Structured Oral Examination (SOE). In the written paper, the marks from the short answer questions paper and the multiple choice questions and single-best answer questions are considered together. This part of the examination can now be passed independently, leaving the candidate to attempt the SOE without the need to resit the written paper. The marks from the written paper are no longer considered when attempting the SOE, except where candidates are being considered for the

To pass the examination, the written paper must be passed in full, followed by an independent pass of the structured oral examination (known commonly as the viva)

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