CEM - Revalidation

The Role of the College

The College of Emergency Medicine role in recertification, as with other medical royal colleges and faculties, is:

• To set educational, professional and clinical standards for the specialty, thus encouraging good medical practice and standards of care

• Develop and pilot methods to demonstrate a practitioner’s fitness to practice, both professional conduct and clinical competence, against the specialty standards

• To be able to provide assistance to individuals that are struggling to provide supporting information to demonstrate fitness to practice

• To have a system which will enable early identification of colleagues in difficulty throughout the 5 year cycle both at a local, regional and national level so that remedial action either locally or via the college can be implemented at the appropriate level

• Facilitate approving, obtaining and recording of relevant high quality CPD in line with the requirements of revalidation.

The College has established a Revalidation subcommittee of the Professional Standards Committee, under the direction of the Revalidation Chair Dr Jacky Hanson, to continue and complete specific work streams as well as develop a quality assurance framework for revalidation.

This committee will continue to develop several work streams including:

• Drafting guidance about the Specialty Standards Framework
• Piloting the specialty elements of Revalidation
• Developing appropriate multi-source feedback and patient feedback tools
• Establishing e-learning assessments
• Producing specialty specific guidance about appraisal
• Quality Assuring the revalidation process
• Develop a system of support for remedial problems/doctors in difficulty including local, regional and national support
• E-portfolio and WBA development
• Developing revalidation guidance for patients
• ‘Orphan groups’– there are a number of doctors in the specialty that do not work in the NHS who are EM doctors, these areas need to be identified so advice can be given regarding revalidation
• Providing detailed revalidation information on CEM website for Fellows and Members
• Developing CPD modules appropriate for supporting revalidation.

The subcommittee is currently recruiting representatives from each National/Regional area. If you would like to get involved please contact your College Regional Board or the subcommittee administrator at philip.mcmillan@collemergencymed.ac.uk.

Click on these links for the subcommittee Terms of Reference and membership.

Academy Revalidation Development Group (ARDG)

For the last 2 years, the Academy, Colleges and Faculties have been working to define the standards and supporting information for doctors across the medical specialties.  In the White Paper, Trust, Assurance and Safety, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges was charged with two primary tasks:

1. To “… support the development of recertification processes and working closely with the GMC, to establish a UK working group to support co-ordination and piloting of these processes, including ensuring equivalence of standards between Medical Royal Colleges” (DH 2007: 35).
2. To lead the work of the Medical Royal Colleges and Faculties in drawing up standards for each area of specialist recertification. “These standards will be tested against the needs of patients and healthcare providers and based on wide consultation with all relevant stakeholders. The standards will be agreed with the GMC to ensure that they are sufficient to meet the requirements for remaining on the appropriate part of the medical register” (DH 2007: 35).

To address these tasks, the ARDG has established an ongoing project which contains three main workstreams:

1. Standards – building on an adapted framework for appraisal and revalidation developed by the GMC, we have asked all of the colleges to define specialty specific standards for recertification and to identify the methods and evidence that could be used by doctors to demonstrate that they have achieved the standard.
2. Work Groups – have been established covering areas of common interest for development across the specialties. These groups include: E-portfolio; MSF; Non-Clinical Work of Doctors; CPD; and Remediation. Reports from these working groups are available on the AoMRC website at http://www.aomrc.org.uk/reports.aspx
3. Methods and Tools –Colleges and Faculties are establishing and running a number of projects looking at the development and piloting of specific methods for recertification.

For further information about the work of the Academy please visit: www.aomrc.org.uk/revalidation.aspx