Notes from RCGP Council meeting 23 June 2018

Highlights from this meeting included the following.

A new vision for General Practice

A draft paper on the future role of GPs.

Person Centred Care

This approach, which RCGP has been developing since 2012, revolves around the maintenance of a written care plan for each patient as part of a collaborative partnership between patient and health professional, not least to help patients identify resources within themselves and their community to manage their wellbeing.

It was suggested that the language used was unhelpful, implying disempowerment of both doctors, who must provide whatever patients need, and patients as passive recipients of care, which is presumably the opposite of that intended.

Challenges were also made to the recommendation for social prescribing by doctors. [There is insufficient evidence that it is successful or value for money.] It was suggested that doctors should instead only do that which a medical licence is required for.

I think we need to move away from GPs being expected to ‘administer’ advice to their patients. If it doesn’t require us to need a medical licence it’s shouldn’t be our role.

— Clare Gerada #FBPE (@ClareGerada) June 23, 2018

Urgent and Out-of-Hours Care

Tentative suggestions that all GPs should regularly undertake some out of hours work were not welcomed.

Sponsorship consultation

A consultation is underway to reframe RCGP's policy on accepting sponsorship. Please share your views with your Faculty board as a matter if urgency.

I thanked the Chair of trustees for taking on feedback from myself and others in designing this consultation but observed that some respondents are still finding the survey confusing. Some Faculties are asking board members to respond individually, rather than provide a single consensus answer as would apparently be preferred. I asked how we would ensure that the votes of Faculties are weighted according to their size rather than the number of responses.

I noted that the Hon. Secretaries must be grateful to have had help in administering this consultation but suggested that the Chair of trustees, inscrutable as he no doubt is, might have an interest in preserving the status quo and therefore in future it might be preferable to allow the Hon. Secretaries to coordinate consultations on behalf of the trustee board, as they do for other RCGP consultations.