Exam chaos on Wednesday the 29th of June, 2700 trainee pharmacists sat the GPhC pre reg exam and unfortunately for some, this was a stressful and chaotic day due to IT failures causing serve delays.
Sitting your exam is a stressful and nerve racking experience in itself but many candidates were faced with unnecessary added amounts of stress and anxiety as their exam was delayed and also cut short for time at the end. The candidates who were affected the most were in the test centre in Nottingham, one of 113 BLT Group centres to host the exam. Candidates were not able to start their first paper until the afternoon which then meant paper 2 was delayed further. Some of the candidates have reported and took to social media posting that they did not leave the exam centre until 11pm that night.
GPhC CEO Duncan Rudkin has acknowledged the disaster faced by these candidates and expressed his apologies and advises that the affected candidates will be fully reimbursed and if they do fail this exam, they will be allowed to appeal on the basis of these severe delays and this attempt will not be counted towards their allocated three attempts. Despite the trainees being offered ‘a really big sorry’ and a full refund, it doesn’t make up for the ordeal and stress they faced, not to mention the future consequences of potential resits.
Understandably there has been an outrage by the pre-registration pharmacists for the Exam chaos as this may cause further delays in embarking their career post qualification if they have to resit their exam.
GPhC have had so much time to prepare for this exam so really any issues, IT mishaps or disruptions are inexcusable. The BLT group held the set of exams for the first time after recently being selected by the GPhC to hold these exams for the next year. First impressions haven’t been good by any means. An internal investigation for the disruptions is now underway within the BLT group.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society has also urged GPhC to look at their processes and contingencies for the exams later in November this year and ensure they are better prepared for any IT failures. Hopefully this is one disaster that won’t happen again or at least be managed better if the parties involved evaluate this situation and learn from it.