Medical exam scrapped after students cheat online

MEDICAL students at a top university colluded in a final year exam.

Around 270 undergraduates at the University of Glasgow will now have to resit a major test after course leaders found evidence of cheating.

Two students caught sharing information online ahead of the exam face being banned from graduating. A number of others are being investigated. They were due to begin working as NHS doctors in August.

The implicated students are facing disciplinary and fitness to practise hearings and a fresh exam has been timetabled for early May. Professor Matthew Walters, head of the university’s school of medicine, dentistry and nursing, said the data breach was unprecedented. He added: ‘We monitor social media and detected a small number of students sharing certain information that may have given them an advantage.

‘Students had got hold of some questions used previously and were discussing this despite our instructions to the contrary.

‘Collusion of this nature calls into question the validity of the assessment, so we have scrapped the exam. Regrettably we have to do the whole thing again. Two students are facing disciplinary procedures.’

The test was a practical in which students are faced with a number of challenges at different points on a ward, such as interpreting an X-ray, making a diagnosis or examining a patient.

But because there are limited scenarios the examiners can create, students are not allowed to discuss situations they have come across themselves or know to have been used before in the tests.

A first year medical student said: ‘We’re all so angry that a select few people think it’s OK to cheat, because now we are all tainted. I don’t know why anybody would go through five years of a degree only to throw it away at the end. It reflects badly on everyone.’

The school of medicine at Glasgow University is both highly ranked and one of the largest centres in Europe.

Mita Dhullipala, of the British Medical Association’s Scottish medical students committee, said: ‘This is obviously very concerning for both students and the medical school faculty and we support the decision to arrange for the exam to be retaken.’