The European Board of Hand Surgery aims to raise the level of hand surgery throughout Europe. Therefore it is now testing over a hundred students a year through the end-to-end online exam platform assessmentQ. “The platform is much more user-friendly than our previous in-house system”.

A helping hand

Every year, more than a hundred post-graduate students specialising in hand surgery sit an advanced level exam, with a helping hand for the organisers from the versatile online exam platform, assessmentQ.

The European Board of Hand Surgery (EBHS) Diploma Examination is aimed at surgeons completing their training. Future hand surgeons, mainly from Europe but also from further afield, including India and Australia, test their advanced theory knowledge in this way. The examination is open only to surgeons with significant previous experience in hand surgery.

“To organise examinations, we get assistance from the Federation of European Societies for Surgery of the Hand (FESSH). The Federation helps set up the online multiple choice exam in assessmentQ. The MCQ written exam is supplemented by an oral examination that takes place at the annual FESSH congress”, explains Lindsay Muir, Consultant hand surgeon and Chair of the EBHS examination committee.

A more pragmatic and professional platform

Previously, the EBHS exam would take place in the conventional way: with pen and paper. However, over the years, as the number of candidates rose from twenty to fifty and then sixty, the EBHS had to look for a more pragmatic solution. This is why they developed their own online system for taking the exam. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that the in-house online exam portal could not handle the steady increase in the number of students either.

“Assessing paper exams was extremely time-consuming, which is why we developed our online system. But our online examination platform could not cope with the number of students. assessmentQ offered an efficient solution for both issues”.

Lindsay Muir, hand surgeon and Chair of the EBHS examination committee

Thanks to a suggestion from a colleague at the Council of European Specialist Medical Assessment (CESMA), Lindsay found out about Televic Education and assessmentQ. “CESMA provides recommendations and guidelines for the organisation of European exams for medical specialists across the continent. After a review of our previous examination method, they suggested we evaluate assessmentQ”, says Lindsay.

The benefits of assessmentQ were already apparent from its first use, in March 2024. It offers a much more professional exam platform and has absolutely no issue with handling a high number of participants. Both the examination and evaluation process of the EBHS are now simpler, more secure and more efficient.

Another great advantage is the real-time exam supervision, which monitors and reports on candidates’ progress, and detects any connectivity issues and incidents. “Exam supervision used to be a challenge for us, because we needed a large number of invigilators. Now, assessmentQ does this all for us!”, says Lindsay.

Technical support

In the meantime, the second multiple choice exam has been taken in assessmentQ, and the EBHS keeps learning how to work better with the online evaluation platform. “Because we currently only use assessmentQ once a year, we are still in the process of ascertaining the best set-up. The platform is very versatile and offers so many options that we are still figuring it all out”, says Nándor Mátrai, office manager at FESSH.

Televic Education offers various types of support to make this easier. For example, users can get one-to-one help with creating exams or with interpreting the in-depth exam data reports. Nándor: “We mainly used this one-to-one support, but afterwards, we also received additional instruction videos to help us along the way”.

The first two implementations went without a hitch and the EBHS was very impressed with the swift and professional support offered by Televic Education. For the second exam, they opted to let Televic import the questions from an existing Excel spreadsheet, which further simplified the test creation.

What tips would the EBHS give to other assessmentQ users? “Give yourself enough time to create the exams and make sure you capitalise on the expertise of the technical advisors at Televic Education. Be aware that you will get a lot of data on your exam results that will challenge you on how to make best use of this resource.”

“The examination platform is very extensive and offers so many possibilities”.

Nándor Mátrai, office manager at FESSH

Positive feedback

The future hand surgeons also benefit from the new platform. A more user-friendly test platform makes for a more pleasant overall exam experience.

“We held a survey among the students on the user-friendliness of assessmentQ. Thankfully, we received nothing other than excellent feedback. The only criticism coming from students was about the content of the exam questions”, says Lindsay with a smile.