After lunch Pam Garside chaired a session in which Sir Graeme Catto, President of the General Medical Council (GMC) reminded us what the GMC is all about —To protect the health and safety of the community by ensuring proper standards in medicine,— and how revalidation will work. Later this year, registered doctors will be asked if they wish to be granted a ‘licence to practise’ (without which, one assumes, practising will be illegal). From next year, maintenance of this licence will depend on successful revalidation. Although in discussion it emerged that the actual mechanics of revalidation is anything but clear, for most of us working in managed environments this will depend on providing evidence of satiscatory appraisal, even though appraisal is meant not to be a means of performance assessment.
Alistair Scotland then presented a ‘whistle stock take’ (sic) of the National Clinical Assessment Authority (NCAA)’s recent activities. Referals od doctors with problems continues to rise [I wrote down 1.2%, but missed the denominator]. Referalls of GPs and psychiatrists are particularly on the increase, the latter perhaps reflecting the problems of a shortage specialty operating in an a poorly-managed environment beset by the disruption of multiple mergers, rather than any particular characteristic of psychiatrists. Overall, Alistair was upbeat about the impact of the NCAA, feeling that it is having a useful effect on the number of suspensions, but noting that nearly a quarter of these are ‘resolving’ by the individual concerned resigning his or her post. The age of referrals to the NCAA co-incides with what is assumed to be the peak of one’s productive life: there is no excess of newly-qualified consultants, partly allaying fears that shortened training would reduce competence.
