Examine PACES internationally

How to examine PACES internationally

For each of the international centre the London college selects at least one PACES examiner to represent the college. Owing to the limited number of opportunities to examine internationally the college has established criteria that examiners must meet in order to be eligible to represent the RCP at an international PACES centre. At the core of the criteria is an effort to recognise and reward an examiner’s level of involvement in the exam.

Under the criteria examiners must:

• be GMC registered with a licence to practise and in good standing (or regulatory equivalent in country of practice)
• work in the UK or have been retired from UK clinical practice for no more than two years
• be involved in regular examining activity in the UK (at a minimum examining annually)
• have examined a minimum of 250 candidates in the past five years (usually equivalent to 50 PACES cycles).

A credit system has been devised to rank all examiners based on their examining activity. Examiner activity has been calculated between September 2017 and August 2022 for the 2023 international list. The top 110 examiners will be contacted about international examining opportunities.

The selection system allocates credits on examining as follows:

• 10 credits for each cycle of PACES examining in the UK (applies to 11th examiner also)
• 5 credits for each cycle of PACES examining in an international centre (applies to 11th examiner also).

Honorary eligibility

The RCP will allocate honorary eligibility to a small number of examiners who may not meet the criteria set out above but who have a particular case for international activity owing to a role held with the RCP. An example of this might be an RCP international officer.

Selection on this basis will be at the discretion of the senior RCP examiner.