When medical exams go wrong, & CTE in the NFL

In this week’s podcast we’ll be hearing a lot about exams - the bane of many doctor’s training lives, exams that determine your future are scattered through medicine and can cause a huge amount of anxiety and stress…   John McLachlan, professor of medical education at the University of Lancashire, has carried out four reviews of medical exams. He explains what happens to the people who have been marked wrongly, why he thinks re-sits should be done differently, and why multiple choice questions are still in use.   Over the Summer there have been extensive protests from the young people of India, the “Cockroach Janta Party” has led demonstrations across the country, sparked by allegations of cheating in India’s “NEET” exams - the federal tests taken by applicants to India's medical training.   Rohan Krishnan, orthopaedic surgeon in Delhi, and chief of the Federation of All India Medical Association, and Kathir Karuppiah, a house surgeon in Tamil Nadu, join us to explain where India's medical admissions tests are failing students.   We’ll also hear about new research into Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in NFL players.  Daniel Daneshvar is associate professor at Harvard Medical School, and he and his co-authors have examined the brains of 338 former players, with the goal of determining how many of them died with CTE neurodegeneration. He joins us to explain his findings, and what it means for competitive sports players and others who play contact sports.   Reading list:   “Cockroach” victory: India’s education minister resigns over medical exam scandal linked to 12 suicides   Prevalence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy at death in National Football League players: retrospective population based cohort study, 2008-21