ABSTRACT
It is no surprise that the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) cares about doctors having excellent consultation skills and ensures that those entering the profession can demonstrate this – not just once but in a multitude of different ways and throughout the three years of training. Effective consultation skills are essential in order to pass the MRCGP, the licensing exam that allows doctors to practise as GPs in the UK. Workplace-based assessment (WPBA) is a series of different assessment tools applied in each post throughout the 3 years of training. The clinical skills assessment (CSA) is a test of consultation skills in a 'live' surgery of, generally, 13 simulated patients at 10-minute intervals with a couple of minutes between each patient and a break half way through. The RCGP framework through which consultation skills are observed and assessed follows the familiar model of the consultation.
