I've been doing my monthly Online EQA System grading over the past couple of days. Sadly I can't reveal my results for legal reasons (and the fact that it would send my patients running for the hills in terror), but the main issue I have with the system is quite simply the amount of time it takes to complete an image set.

We were told that it should take us approximately ninety minutes a month, which sounds perfectly reasonable. In reality, however, even the fastest grader in the west couldn't get through an image set in that time. The EQA website is as slow as a ninety-year-old diabetic with bad feet, and makes you feel like you've gone back to the bad old days of dial-up. I had to shut it down and log back in more than half a dozen times yesterday after the whole thing ground to complete halt and wouldn't move.

I don't know if the answer is better servers, more bandwidth, or just a few extra hamsters on the generator wheel, but something needs to be done. It's taken me the best part of two days to get through thirty questions, and it's time I can ill afford to spare. I'm all in favour of monthly EQA tests to ensure that we're all grading to a reasonable standard, and to give us a few pointers if we're not, but at the moment the system isn't really fit for purpose.