STAMPS, KFP… lots of letters, why the fuss?

In short, because they matter. They are summative exams – you must pass them to proceed to the next stage of the assessments, and ultimately to get your fellowship. They are stressful, and they are high stakes.

The AKT stands for the Applied Knowledge Test examination, whilst the KFP stands for the Key Feature Problem examination. Whilst the AKT is a very common format, the KFP is much less so – they feature in Australian, Malaysian and Hong Kong GP Fellowship exams, having originally been imported from Canada. The KFP is primarily short answer questions with some multiple-choice questions.

The ACRRM MCQ exam is a form of the Applied Knowledge Test examination. Whilst the AKT is a very common format, the STAMPS is much less so. There are however some similarities with the KFP exam. The KFP is primarily short answer questions with some multiple-choice questions, but with an emphasis on clinical reasoning.

They all are supposed to test applied knowledge – the application of basic knowledge into a clinical scenario. As such many are 2-step questions –e.g., you use the information in the question to work out what the diagnosis is and then use this to answer what the question may be answering about the best treatment.

This is all well and good so far, except that somewhere along the line you need to also be able to understand the rules of the game. Did you know that it is possible to get killer answers, negative points and capped maximum scores for grouped answers in some College exams? If you didn’t know this, you might well find yourself losing marks unnecessarily, or worse still, failing - even though you are very well prepared.

Don’t worry – we show you all of this, and so much more. We also offer a thorough and meticulous grounding of relevant medical knowledge.