The system will now connect you to a proctor who will perform a security check of your workspace and surroundings. You will be asked to confirm your identity and the exam that you have opted for. Following this, the proctor will ask you to show your workspace and surroundings on the web camera. A lightweight laptop or a portable webcam will be handy for this. They want to ensure that you are taking the exam from a closed room so they see four corners of your ceiling. They will also want to check your pockets so make sure you do not have anything on you and preferably wear something with few/ not pockets. Your workspace should not have anything other than your laptop. Two napkins were allowed and those were inspected by the proctor. This ProProctor security check takes about 10 minutes and has to be repeated every time you take a break or are disconnected from the system.
There are no restrictions on what you should be wearing but I would suggest that you dress up as you would for any other exam.
When the proctor is happy with their assessment, they will let you in for the exam. While you take the exam a remote proctor will monitor your web camera feed. The second proctor will communicate with you over chat and audio (the first proctor is on video and audio). At any time during the exam you need help you can chat with the proctor using the “Chat option”.
The exam interface was similar to the in-person exam interface which probably would be the case for you as well. There were no issues with the interface and software as such. Well at least for the first half an hour! About 30 minutes into the exam, I got an error message on my screen that I do not have an internet connection and my exam was disconnected. I did not anticipate this and was not sure what needed to be done. My internet was working fine. I checked my email to see if I had received any communication from Prometric and if I have to take the exam again, which would have been a nightmare given the prep that I had put in the exam 😥.
I checked the Prometric website to see if help was available. The chatbot on the website was not very helpful and I expected to talk to a real person. I tried to log in again. I was able to log in to the system but had to wait more than 20 minutes in the queue for the proctor. I thought it was a system error and everybody else was trying to log in again at the same time. Now this is a catch-22 situation because you cannot access anything else on your computer, you cannot leave your workspace and you cannot exit the application as that will take to back in the queue once you log out and log in again. I wasted more than an hour trying to log in. Before I gave up, I decided to restart my computer and voila! That worked. I was greeted by a proctor within no time and was able to continue the exam where I left after the mandatory security check.
This happened at least 6 times during the exam and every time I wasted at least 20 minutes in this process. I got the same error every time in spite of having functional high-speed internet. I assume these could be due to too many people taking the exam at the same time and an increased server load. Not only was it annoying to do it all over again every time but it was difficult to concentrate on the exam with all these interruptions. It took me more than 11 hours to finish an exam which was scheduled for 8 hours. Some of my colleagues ended up spending more than 12 hours. Some of them were able to get help from the Prometric Chat section but that had its own issues. You can check the common system error codes and solutions in this document: ProProcotor FAQs and Common Error Codes .
So my advice is anytime you get kicked out just restart your system and log in again.
Final thoughts on the Prometric ProProctor Exam: The Prometric ProProctor remote exam is a convenient solution for those who cannot take in-person exams but it’s far from ideal. If you have an exam that can wait, I would suggest signing up for the in-person exam as the stress with these frequent interruptions can negatively impact your performance. On the other hand, if you are confident of your preparation and you can arrange for a good test-taking environment, you should take the remote exam instead of waiting for the next in-person exam.
Best of luck! If you have any questions, you can let me know in the comments section below.
Disclaimer: The author makes no claims of the accuracy of the information contained herein; this information is for educational purposes only. If you have any questions regarding the exam, make sure you contact Prometric and your respective exam authority. All information is sourced from available resources on Google.
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About the Author Dr. Amar Udare, MD, DNB
Dr. Amar Udare is a board-certified radiologist. He is currently working as a fellow radiologist at McMaster University, Canada. He has a passion for teaching (#FOAMrad and #FOAMed) and has been a semi-finalist for the 2018 and 2020 Aunt-Minnie Most effective Radiology Educator Awards. He has authored multiple peer-reviewed publications which can be accessed on
PubMed and
Google Scholar .
