Application Procedures and Protocols

Please address all applications to:-

MSA Office,

Clinical Sciences Centre,

Aintree Hospitals,

Liverpool L9 7AL

How to Apply & What needs to be Understood:-

• Carefully download & complete the Generic Application Form taking particular care to print the email address & appropriate telephone numbers clearly.
  You must include an Email Address & Telephone Numbers by which you can be easily contacted.
  Applications without an email address & contact telephone numbers cannot be considered.

• Submit your cheque with the completed Application Form.
  The cheque needs to be made out to:

LHCH (MSA) Trust Account.for the MCQ Courses

Aintree Hospitals Trust for the SAQ Weekend Courses.

The date shown on the cheque should be that date designated as being the Payment Date if submitted in advance of that date.
Cheques submitted after the Payment Date should be dated correctly.

• You will receive by email an Acknowledgement of your Application but this will Not be a Receipt.
  Receipts are issued with Certificate of Attendance at the close of the courses. You will also be given a Number for the purpose of Reference.
  Henceforth, you should quote the number when communicating with the office

• If you have not received an acknowledgement by email within 14 days of posting your application, you should email:-

David.Strong@aintree.nhs.uk .

• If you do not receive a response to your email, please email:

David.Gray@aintree.nhs.uk

Please do not use this latter address in the first instance as this will only confuse things further.

• Approximately two weeks before the Opening Day of the course, you should receive final details. If you do not receive these, you should contact the office David.Strong@aintree.nhs.uk

• Cheques are not banked until after the Opening Day of the courses. If, for whatever reason, you fail to attend, your cheque will not be presented but instead will be destroyed. There is no mechanism for either Refund or Transfer as payment for a later course.

• Finally, you are advised to visit the website www.msoa.org.uk occasionally and check the Notice Board for any postings regarding the course.

There is a Limit for these courses & thus there might be a Waiting List

• Carefully download & complete the Generic Application Form taking particular care to print the email address & appropriate telephone numbers clearly.
  You must include an Email Address & Telephone Numbers by which you can be easily contacted.
• Applications without an email address & contact telephone numbers cannot be considered.
• Submit your cheque with the completed Application Form.
• The cheque needs to be made out to: LHCH (MSA) Trust Account.
• The date shown on the cheque should be that date designated as being the Payment Date if submitted in advance of that date.
• Cheques submitted after the Payment Date should be dated correctly.
• You will receive by email an Acknowledgement of your Application but this will Not be a receipt. Receipts are issued with Certificate of Attendance at the close of the courses.

• With the acknowledgement, you will also be given a Number for the purpose of Reference.
  Henceforth, you should quote the number when communicating with the office

• If you have not received an acknowledgement by email within 14 days of posting your application, you should email:-

David.Strong@aintree.nhs.uk .

• If you do not receive a response to your email, please email:

David.Gray@aintree.nhs.uk

Please do not use this latter address in the first instance as this will only confuse things further.

• If the applications are such that a Waiting List is required, notice will be given to the applicants as illustrated by the Important Notice as tabled below.

• As some early applicants with places on the Course List subsequently decide to postpone sitting the examination and thus withdraw from the course, many of those on the Waiting List are transferred to the Course List.

The definitive April Course List is now extant and the course is Closed (Posted March 08). All those applicants with names remaining on the Waiting List have been informed accordingly and advised to apply elsewhere.

Important Notice To all Applicants for April 2009 Final FRCA (Booker) Revision Course

The capacity of the course is 90 candidates. There is now (December) a Waiting List.

For those courses to which there is no limit to the number of candidates that can be accommodated, we do not present cheques for payment until after the course. This is because, while it is very easy to put money into our NHS Charitable Trust Account, it is extremely difficult & very time-consuming to get it back as a refund. We already pay the Cardiothoracic Trust (CTC) £11K per annum to handle the account but it is comfortably reckoned that the fee would be doubled if we had to refund course fees to those who fail to attend.

For those courses such as the Final FRCA (Booker) Revision Course for which there is a limit, we have had to change the rules. Many trainees apply for these courses a much as twelve months ahead of time and, almost inevitably, a Waiting List is created.

Unless we know for certain that those with places on the Course List are definitely going to attend, there is the danger that, on the day, some do not turn-up and thus a matching number of applicants on the Waiting List are denied a place.

Thus, we now ask that applicants confirm their intention of attending the course sufficiently ahead of time such that any places on the course created by cancellation can be offered to those on the Waiting List.

The confirmation is endorsed by the understanding that, once it is received, the cheques will be presented for payment and subsequently there will be no refund.

Such ‘closing of the Definitive Course List’ enables us to inform those remaining on the Waiting List sufficient time & opportunity to find an alternative course.

Regarding the September course, we are currently (June) contacting all those whose names are on the Course List asking them to confirm that they wish to retain their place.

The cheques of any who confirm acceptance of a place will be presented for payment and the candidates will be advised that there will be no refunds available to any to who subsequently fail to attend the course.

Once we have the names in, should there be any spare places by reason of withdrawals, we will trawl down the Waiting List until we have a full complement of candidates.

After that, we will advise those on the residual Waiting List that they have not got a place thus giving them time to consider other options.

We applied this protocol for the first time in September 2006, repeated it for the June course and, in both instances, ended -up with exactly 90 candidates with those failing to get a place at least allowed plenty of time to look elsewhere.

Important Note for Mersey Deanery Trainees re The Booker Course

Trainees on the Mersey Deanery Rotation will only be admitted to the Booker Course once and thus they should only apply for the examination and for the associated Final Revision Course when they feel the Deserve to Pass and Not in the Hope of Passing.

Further, Mersey Deanery candidates should submit their applications promptly as they cannot presume a place on the course after January 1 st.

Until we changed the rules of admission to this course, we were finding that a number of trainees were coming to the course although still many months away from sitting the Primary. While we appreciated their wish for the experience, because they were not ready for the examination, they came to the course inadequately prepared to participate fully & effectively. This tended to detract from the dynamism of the course which was not fair to those who were due for OSCE/Orals examination in a matter of days. Thus candidates will not be admitted to the OSCE/Orals course if they are unable to produce evidence confirming they are sitting the imminent staging of the examination at the College in London or Dublin respectively.

The Observer Policy

Over the years, we have found it convenient to have three Observers on hand at the opening of the course to allow for Late Arrivals or FTAs
We offer Observer Places to those on the Waiting List (in order) who do not get a place on the definitive Course List.
The deal is as follows:-
If, at the Opening of the Course, any candidate on the Course List who has not made it in time, his/her name is removed from the Course List and offered to the first of the Observers.

Thus the Late Arrivals become Observers.
The Observers will be allowed access to the Master Classes & to all the course fodder but they will not participate as examinees in the mock OSCE and mock Vivas on the Tuesday & Friday.
They will however be able to observe these sessions.
The Observers are not charged a Course Fee.

So far as we know, only One Observer has failed the subsequent exam.

Important Notice regarding the OSCE/Orals Courses

With the change in the rules, as from June 2007 the OSCE/SOEs Examination stands alone and thus the candidate list for OSCE/Orals Courses becomes independent of the results of the MCQ Paper. Applications for the OSCE/Orals courses will be accepted at any time and, if a course becomes over-subscribed, on or about the Closing Date of Application(CDA) for the RCA Examination, applicants on the Course List will be asked to confirm that they wish to reserve their place.

The vacated places of any who withdraw from the Course will be offered, in order, to those on the Waiting List asking for immediate confirmation of acceptance.

On receiving the requested confirmations, the relevant cheques will be presented for payment and there will be No Refund whatever the circumstances.

Unfortunately, for reasons stated elsewhere on this Website, it is very difficult and costly to process refunds.

However, we cannot afford to have applicants commit to a course and subsequently fail to attend as the structure of the course is such that we need to have exactly 48 candidates.

In the event of over-subscription, for a number of good reasons and to be fair to all, we will be intending to establish the Definitive Course List (DCL) as soon as possible after the CDA.

Once the DCL is established, the course will be considered as closed and any on the residual Waiting List will be informed accordingly thus affording them the opportunity to make other plans.

The Mersey Weekend Series

(The Aintree Way)

The Mersey Weekend Series of Courses, since April 1 st 2006, for the sake of clarification and fiscal probity, are run under the aegis of The Aintree Way but, apart from the change of Account (Aintree Hospitals Trust), they remain the same as they have been over the last seven years in every respect.

The Primary Viva Weekend Course

The Primary OCSE Weekend Course

The Final FRCA Viva Weekend Course

The Final SAQ Course

Application Procedure

The Application Procedure for the Weekend Series is identical to that of the Mersey Series EXCEPT that the cheques should be made out to:-

Aintree Hospitals NHS Trust