Royal College of General Practitioners

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North of England Faculty Newsletter

• Royal College of General Practitioners

Your Annual General Meeting A Success!
This years Annual General Meeting was held at The
Three Tuns in Durham City. The event was attended
well with 57 people attending the evening dinner
and a few others who just attended the excellent
lecture provided by Professor Allyson Pollock of
Edinburgh University. Our Provost Dr Rodger
Thornham renounced the role of Provost and handed
over to Dr Paul Creighton. Within the meeting we
also paid thanks to Dr Toby Lipman who resigned
as Chairman for his dedication over his reigning
years. Dr Malcolm Thomas has taken over this post
with the aim of providing members with more
courses and events. Dr Dinah Roy has agree to
continue as Honorary Secretary and Dr Ahmet Fuat
as Honorary Treasurer.
Thank you from Roger Neighbour On 17 November my
term as President came to an end. For those who
were able to attend the AGM you were treated to a
superb presentation by our new President
Professor David Haslam. It is a great honour to
pass the presidency to David the College is in
the hands of a very professional, caring and
admirable man. Im sure David will introduce
himself to you in the New Year. I was very
pleased to award 8 members with Fellowship under
the Unified Route. Dr Dennis Cox, Dr Peter
Lindsay, Dr Lyndon Miles, Dr James Hickman, Dr
Anthony Rimmer, Dr Samuel Rowlands, Dr Greg
Rogers and Dr Vijay Nayar were elected as Fellows
of the RCGP. Im sure youll be happy for me to
congratulate them on your behalf. I would like
to take this opportunity to thank you for your
hard work as Faculty Leads. I would also like to
pass my gratitude to our Faculty staff who have
been active in promoting the Unified Route to
Fellowship under my term in office. Im sure you
will continue this commitment and see the fruits
of your labour in the New Year. My relationship
with the College will remain. I am still very
much involved with projects including the Student
Forum which is on its way to be implemented and
piloted, and of course I shall keep a keen and
interested eye on Fellowship having developed it
thus far. I wish you the very best for the
future. With thanks, Roger Neighbour
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North of England Faculty Newsletter 2. Training
Increase your Effectiveness (and reduce your
risk) A one-day consultation skills
workshop 22nd May 2007 at Collingwood
College These workshops are proving to be very
popular amongst our members and as such we are
holding another. We know that skills
identification, rehearsal, observation and
feedback can lead to effective behaviour change
for clinicians. Consequently reducing your
medico-legal, clinical risk and increasing a
clinicians effectiveness. Therefore these skills
aim at the same goals. Using these insights the
workshop will present key messages from the
literature, and structures exercises for the
participants that will allow them to change their
consultation behaviours in a more effective
direction. Suitable for Established or in
training doctors, nurses and allied clinical
professionals who wish to extend their
own consultation skills. Prices are 100
for RCGP members 120 for non-members Tea and
coffee will be supplied and a hot buffet lunch
served. For more details of the course or to book
your place early, please contact the faculty
office to request a leaflet. Booking forms will
be sent out in the next newsletter. Places are
limited therefore early booking is advised. Dr
Malcolm Thomas will be Facilitating this event.
Please note places will only be held for 2 weeks
unless payment is received. Courses will be a
first come first served basis. Any refunds after
payment has been made will incur a 10
administration fee.
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Advanced Course in Skin and Minor Surgery 19th
20th May 2007
This advanced surgical work shop is aimed at GPSI
who are interested in improving their surgical
skill, ideally performing skin surgery regularly
and familiar with all the basic techniques.
Workshops will be held at the Marriott Hotel,
within the beautiful university town of Durham,
home of a stunning cathedral and lovely river.The
course will begin Saturday Morning 19th, ending
Sunday Lunch time 20th May 2007. Although the
course consists of mainly practical sessions,
lectures will cover lesion recognition,
non-sugical treatment of pre-cancerous lesions
BCC, and surgical pitfalls.
The instructors will be senior specialist
registrars or consultant plastic surgeons. We
plan to have a 3 delegate to 1instructor ratio to
ensure each delegate is improved surgically
whatever their level. We will be using plastic
surgery instruments, pork skin and specially
designed jigs to give a realistic feel to
surgery. All aspect of skin surgery will be
covered from planning, marking of lesion,
injecting, cutting, suturing (various form of
mattress, subcutaneous), skin flap, z plasty etc
or what ever else in surgery you wish to
learn. Contact Carol at PCDS Tel 01923
711678 or pcds_at_pcds.org.uk
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North of England Faculty Newsletter 5. RCGP -
QPA
RCGP Quality Practice Award (QPA) The Quality
Practice Award (QPA) has been running now for
more than ten years. During that time 80
practices from England, 76 from Scotland, 11 from
Northern Ireland and 1 from Wales have been
through this process with some undertaking it a
second time after their 5-year accreditation had
lapsed. So why do practices want to undergo such
a rigorous process and what are the
benefits? Well firstly the criteria, if met, are
an evidenced mark of high quality practice and
have been shown to demonstrate gold standard
patient care. All areas of General Practice are
covered in the 23 sections laid out in the
current (9th) version and each year the criteria
are revised and aligned with the current demands
of best practice. They include and exceed the
standards set down in QOF but more important than
this they encourage and develop three other
aspects of top quality care. Teamwork - looking
at how teams work together, define their values
and develop in response to the demands of patient
care. Reflective practice - using individual and
team cases to reflect on the care provided and
how improvements can be made. Patient
involvement - seeing patients as a practice
resource and partners in the development of
services and good care. It is not an easy
process to undertake but through a National QPA
adviser and good administrative support the QPA
team can help. It takes an average 18 months to
two years to complete. The process involves
collecting and presenting data against the
criteria to clearly demonstrate compliance with
the set standards and ultimately an assessment
visit by four trained QPA assessors who will
spend a whole day in your practice checking
compliance, interviewing patients and team
members and giving formative feedback. If you
are looking for a challenge why not find out more
about it? Come to one of our Candidate Days,
take a look at our newsletter on the College
web-site or just contact the QPA office for
further details. Dr John Warwick FRCGP (Co-Chair
QPA). For further details please contact Sheila
Veale, QPA UK Administrator, Royal College of
General Practitioners, The David Anderson
Building, Foresterhill Road, ABERDEEN AB25 2ZP
Tel [phone] e-mail sheila.veale_at_nhs.net
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North of England Faculty Newsletter 6. Faculty
Board
The North of England's New Faculty Board Dr
Paul Creighton - Provost Dr
Malcolm Thomas Chairman/Deputy Council Rep Dr
Dinah Roy-Honorary Secretary Dr Ahmet
Fuat-Honorary Treasurer Dr Valerie Taylor-Council
Rep Other Faculty Board Members Dr Toby
Lipman Dr Tom Poyner Dr Rowan Walmsley Dr
Rodger Thornham Dr Manjit Suchdev Miss Clare
Bartram-Faculty Administrator. If you wish to
attend the Faculty Board Meeting or would like to
contact any of the Board members please contact
the Faculty Office North of England
Faculty Telephone [phone] The
Surgery Email cbartram_at_rcgp.org.uk Oxford
Road Spennymoor Co. Durham DL16 6YQ
Merry
Christmas
Dates of Faculty Board Meetings for your
diary February 22nd 2007_at_ Marriot Hotel Metro
Centre June 13th 2007 Location to be
ascertained September 12th 2007 Location to be
ascertained
Would you like to contribute to your next Faculty
Newsletter? Maybe you could review the book your
reading, or would like to comment on something.
If so please get in touch, this is your paper to
help your colleagues.
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North of England Faculty Newsletter 3. Change in
GP Practice
All Change in GP training Bruno Rushforth argues
that reforms to GP training must maintain a GP
focus throughout the three year programme The
reforms to postgraduate medical training, as set
out in Modernizing Medical Careers (MMC), are
extensive and offer the potential to deliver a
truly streamlined career structure for those
graduating from medical school. After two year of
the Foundation Programme, where all recent
graduates are required to demonstrate
competencies in generic skills such as team
working and communication and the ability to
manage acutely ill patients, trainees apply for
specialty training programmes, including General
Practice Specialty Training (GPST). In addition
to this new structure for entry into GPST, the
RCGP is introducing a new MRCGP exam that all GP
trainees will be required to pass. The exam will
comprise an Applied Knowledge Test (AKT), a
Clinical Skills Exam (CSA), and workplace based
assessment. The complete assessment process will
be informed by a new GP curriculum, recently
approved by the Postgraduate Medical Education
and Training Board (PMETB). GPST will last
three years and involve a combination of hospital
specialty posts, together with typically 12-18
months based in general practice, which may or
may not include an innovative component where
trainees spend part of the week in community or
hospital specialty units but are based in general
practice. In recent years GP training has had
no problem attracting potential recruits, partly
fueled by growing demands among medics for a
better work-life balance and partly due to the
uncertainty of how hospital training would
develop. In addition, GP training has offered
high quality training within practice-based
posts, with one-to-one sessions with a dedicated
trainer and protected time for group learning via
the half day release scheme. However, there has
always been a potential problem with the hospital
posts that make up GP training programmes, due to
heavy service commitments and having specialty
consultants as educational supervisors, who often
have little knowledge or understanding of the GP
learning needs of trainees. In the old system GP
trainees on a three year training scheme could
complete two years in hospital posts without
having any direct exposure to general practice,
and it was therefore difficult to maintain a
clear GP focus during these jobs. Traditionally
it was hoped that this need was met by the half
day release scheme. However, getting time off
from hospital posts to attend has been
problematic.
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North of England Faculty Newsletter 4. Provost
Prize
Hence the opportunity to re-shape GP training
needs to acknowledge the imperative to maintain a
clear GP focus throughout all three years of
GPST. Ideally this would mean educational
supervision being primarily GP based throughout
the programme, together with at least 18 months
work as a GP registrar i.e. based in general
practice with additional hospital components
clearly planned to meet the individual learning
needs of future generalists. Some may argue more
fundamentally for extended training within a
general practice setting. This position has some
merit. Indeed, what other medical discipline
would be satisfied with a mere 12-18 months
exposure in that particular field, before being
signed off for independent practice? However,
this would most probably require GPST to last
longer than three years, which has significant
cost and staffing implications. It remains to
be seen exactly how GPST will turn out, and
whether funding restrictions will impact on the
desired move away from a fragmented, piecemeal
training package, to one of continual development
through GP focused activity and learning.
Tomorrows GPs and their patients will not thank
us if we fail to fully grasp this opportunity to
enhance the quality and focus of GP training.
Bruno Rushforth - GP registrar, Morley,
Leeds brunorush_at_doctors.org.uk
Provosts Prize The patient study involves
observing first hand the impact of a long term
condition on a person and their family or carers.
This involved meeting my patient, a sufferer of
Beckers muscular dystrophy, a number of times in
his home over a six month period. I got to
understand how his condition had evolved over its
twenty year course, and witness the number of
adaptations he had to make to both home and
personal life as a result. Taking his example, I
also began to understand how disability fits into
the workings of society as a whole, and elicited
from him how he thought the stigma attached to
his disability had changed over the years. The
study was a real eye opener to the multifaceted
effects of chronic illness and disability on
both patient and society alike. It was a
privilege to be given the opportunity to share my
patients unique experiences of his condition
and I was honoured to be recognised by
receiving the Provosts Prize. Ian Taylor