What should constitute the clinical component in fellowship examinations in surgery

The consensus of opinion is that in all medical examinations, a failure in the clinical aspect of the examination automatically means a failure in the whole examination regardless of what the total score may be. But opinion differs as to what constitutes the "clinical aspect" of the examination. Some think it should be the average score of only long case and short cases. Others think it should be the total score of long case, short cases and viva voce. Yet others think when the orals are of two parts it should be the average score of long case, short cases and a part of the orals. We therefore used the result of 197 surgical residents that sat for the part 1 fellowship examination of the West African College of Surgeons in April 2012 for this study. We collated the scores of various categories of clinical aspect of the examination to see whether there is any difference in the pass rate of the group.