Notes from RCGP Council meeting 19 November 2016

New Chair

New Chair +Helen Stokes-Lampard set out her priorities, including encouraging delivery of GP Forward View, improving College's offer to members, and reviewing the MRCGP exam. Her vision for modernisation of College seems to include more transparency: her first action was to allow tweets from Council to be live (i.e. removing the one hour delay).

GP Forward View

There was extensive debate about GP Forward View, in which Council considered concerns about its implementation. College will shortly publish an assessment report on implementation.

Membership by Assessment of Performance

Council approved a proposal to allow prospective members more time (five years, to tie in with revalidation cycle) to collect evidence to support application for Membership by Assessment of Performance (MAP).

I suggested that candidates be allowed to collect evidence across each criterion over the whole five years to allow more flexibility. This was not accepted; each criterion will have to be achieved over one year.

I also suggested that we consider allowing nomination to fellowship of non-members. Many leading GPs are not members, either because they qualified before MRCGP was a requirement or because their membership has lapsed, but would otherwise be ideal candidates for fellowship and therefore potential new members. President +Terry Kemple promised this would be explored during the review he plans to lead.