5. Incidents

While every effort is made to ensure all examinations run smoothly and without incident, occasionally the delivery might not go to plan.

While we make every effort to ensure all exams run smoothly and without incident, occasionally an incident may occur in the delivery of an exam.

If an incident occurs during the exam that you believe has a significant effect on your performance in the exam, you should advise the exam staff at the venue or notify the RACGP by emailing examinations@racgp.org.au within two business days of the exam and you may receive compensation. Any incident reported after the deadline of two business days won’t be investigated.

If something happens during an exam that isn’t considered an incident, you won’t be compensated. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• A staff member, examiner, standardised patient or another exam candidate sneezes or coughs during the exam.
• A staff member, examiner or standardised patient has an accent that you have trouble understanding.
• Known disturbance that caused pause during the examination
• You don’t read the exam instructions or case details properly and miss important information.
• You have technical issues (eg computer glitches) that occur before the exam begins.
• There are hospital announcements (MET calls etc) heard in the exam room.
• A staff member knocks at or enters the exam room.
• You recognise one of the examiners.
  Sometimes an examiner may be known to a candidate. Examiners declare if they have a conflict of interest with any candidate; however, not all levels of conflict warrant the replacement of an examiner. If you know an examiner, you should proceed with the case, focusing on the specifics of that case and the simulated patient in front of you, and not dwell on the examiner in the room.
• Names of the simulated patients on the case instructions
  You should apply the case instructions to the gender of the simulated patient in the case, even if the case notes appear to suggest the patient is of a different gender.