Members
sometimes ask how the College is able to represent their views.
This is quite a task, especially as there are more than 13000
members and by definition there will be a range of views on any
given topic!
The Central Executive Committee (CEC), our
College Council, is made up of the chairs of the Divisions,
Faculties and Sections all of whom are elected by their
constituency and all of whom work closely with other elected
members. These are colleagues who have put their names forward for
election, working alongside members throughout the UK and Ireland.
Thus we have excellent geographical and specialty spread at CEC
discussions.
Herewith the
list of current members of CEC. These members are also
the Trustees of the College and are responsible for overseeing the
management of College affairs.
Policy is headed up by the Registrar, Sue
Bailey, with the support of a small Policy Unit. Sue chairs
the Central Policy Co-ordination Committee, also comprising
representatives of Divisions, Faculties and Sections, which signs
off most College policy. Any particularly sensitive policy
decisions are taken to the trustees to consider at CEC before
finally becoming College policy.
The Policy Unit has also been trialling the
use of surveys as a way of testing members' opinions and I am sure
there will be more surveys in the months ahead!
Other ways of finding out what members think
include regular visits by Officers to meetings held by Divisions
and Faculties, or by Trusts or other organisations. At the AGM, the
President and Registrar hold Q & A sessions, and in addition
there is a continuous stream of emails from members with a
particular opinion or question-all of which are answered to the
best of our ability and resources.
The Officers welcome debate and questioning,
but it may not always be possible to incorporate everyone's
views. We do, however, want to hear from as many Members as
possible so please do continue to respond.
I am pleased to announce that three of our
short-term Scoping Groups are ready to report on their findings. We
will be launching each of these Scoping Group reports with an
evening seminar in Belgrave Square.
5.30pm 28 May 2008 –
“Managing Urgent Mental health needs in the Acute
Trust” This report has been endorsed by the Academy
of Medical Royal Colleges.
5.30pm 2 June 2008 –
“Assessment of Risk to Others” This
report is relevant to all specialties in psychiatry.
5.30pm 13 June 2008 –
“Psychological Therapies in Psychiatry and Primary
Care” This report a joint report with the Royal
College of General Practitioners.
If you would like to attend any of these
events, please contact Elen Cook (ecook@rcpsych.ac.uk). There are
only a limited number of tickets available and these will be
allocated on a first come, first served basis.
2. GMC revalidation by Dr Laurence Mynors-Wallis,
Associate Dean and Lead for Revalidation and Robert Jackson, Head
of Postgraduate Education
The GMC has been considering revalidation for
more than 10 years. Criticisms of the earlier proposals led
to a review and the publication of the White Paper (Trust
Assurance and Safety, the Regulation of Health Professionals in the
21st Century) in 2007.
Revalidation should be considered as a single
set of processes with two potential outcomes: relicensing (for all
doctors) and recertification (for doctors on the specialist
register).
The Medical Royal Colleges have a key role in
recertification, the setting of the clinical standards against
which specialists will be measured. The College standards
will form the basis of the standards expected of a specialist
psychiatrist. The GMC will have to agree that the standards
meet the requirements for recertification.
What might revalidation look like for
psychiatrists?
It is likely that a strengthened appraisal
will be the core process in the assessment for revalidation.
We have developed a questionnaire which forms
part of our consultation process looking at the acceptability and
feasibility of potential methods for use in
recertification.
You can read the questionnaire together with
the main information about revalidation for Psychiatrists
www.rcpsych.ac.uk/training/postgraduateeducation/gmcrevalidation.aspx
Please complete the
questionnaire. The key issues raised in
the questionnaire are around your views on the use of:
- the appraisal process for revalidation
- knowledge based assessments for
recertification
- workplace based assessments for
recertification
There is space for free text on how you wish
the College to support the recertification process and for comments
to assist the College in implementing the changes.
3. What do you think of the College website? Dr
Martin Briscoe, Website Editor
Please participate in this short survey to
tell us what you think of the College Website.
Questionnaire
Please respond by 30th May
2008.
4. Translation of the College’s mental health information
leaflets:
Update from Dr Syed Ahmer, Department of Psychiatry, the
Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan
As you know the Royal College creates mental health information
leaflets in a very simple, jargon-free, and easy to understand
language for the general public. These leaflets are freely
downloadable from the College website and there is no restriction
on their free distribution as long as the College is
acknowledged.
Over the last year the College, in collaboration with the
Department of Psychiatry, the Aga Khan University Karachi, has
developed an Urdu version of the Mental Health Information section
of its website. The work is now in initial stages but is steadily
growing. The Urdu leaflets are slightly shorter than the English
ones to include information that would be applicable to the global
Urdu speaking population, and specifically to a Pakistani
population.
After discussion with Dr Martin Briscoe, who is in charge of the
languages section of the College website, it was decided to
disseminate this information to all psychiatrists in Pakistan and
abroad who see patients speaking Urdu as their first or second
language.
Please feel free to print or download these leaflets for
free distribution or training purposes. In case of any
queries you can contact, Deborah Hart at dhart@rcpsych.ac.uk - Head of
Communications and Policy at the College.
The url of the Urdu section of the College website is
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthinformation/languages/urdu.aspx
The leaflets are also available from the Public Education page
of the Department of Psychiatry, AKU website in pdf format.
http://www.aku.edu/medicalcollege/psychiatry/public_education.shtml
We should all thank Dr Philip Timms who is the man responsible
for creating these leaflets, and especially Dr Martin Briscoe who
has spent months on trying to sort out all the problems to bring
the Urdu section to its current position.
This is only the beginning and I am sure there are many mistakes
which we hope you would point out to us so we can correct them.
We would love to hear your feedback and any suggestions for
improvement, on this project. We are adding new leaflets to the
Urdu section every month so you may want to keep visiting the
website off and on.
5. News from the Scottish Division
Following a joint Fringe meeting with the RCN
at the recent Scottish Labour Party Conference, the Scottish
Division submitted a short briefing to the Health Committee of the
Scottish Parliament who are currently conducting an enquiry into
mental health services in Scotland.
The topic of our briefing was “Do we have appropriate numbers of
healthcare staff to deliver on the mental health agenda?'
and is essentially about how to increase
access to psychological therapies. The full text of the briefing
can be found on the
Scottish Division
webpages.
6. Sri Lanka Trek Information Evening on Wednesday 4 June
2008, at 6pm, at the College
All members are welcome to join this exciting trek to the beautiful island of Sri
Lanka.
Our route will pass through tea plantations,
jungle, forests and mountains, and be followed by the opportunity
to visit local psychiatric services.
By joining the trek, you will also help to
raise funds for the College’s Overseas Volunteer Programme,
providing volunteers to work in the mental health services of
developing countries.
Come and hear more about the trek to Sri
Lanka, on Wedneday 4th June 2008, at 6pm, at the Royal College
of Psychiatrists,
17 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PG. If you would like to
attend please email Liz Cowan, lcowan@rcpsych.ac.uk
7. Academy of Royal Medical Colleges: The Effectiveness of
CPD
The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges,
supported by the College of Emergency Medicine, is currently
exploring the effectiveness of CPD through a variety of data
collection strategies, including an online questionnaire. A
questionnaire was piloted at the College of Emergency Medicine
conference in the autumn and was then reviewed by the CPD
leads of each College/Faculty.
The final questionnaire is now uploaded onto
Surveyor and is ready for distribution. The Project’s Steering
group would like this questionnaire to be sent to as many doctors
as possible across all specialties
Questionnaire
So please take 5 minutes to complete this
questionnaire.
8. Drugs advisors: Cannabis
should remain class C - but Brown remains defiant on tightening
laws
The government's drugs advisors are set to
recommend that cannabis should remain a class C drug. The Advisory
Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) will report to the government
later in April on its decision.
The prime minister has expressed concern with
the stronger forms of the drug becoming available and asked the
council to review its classification."Given the changing nature of
the stock of cannabis that is coming into the country and greater
damage that it appears to be doing to people who
use it, there is a stronger case for sending out a signal that
cannabis is not only illegal but it is unacceptable," Gordon Brown
said earlier this week.
But the BBC has claimed that the council is in
favour of keeping the classification the same. A spokesperson
for the ACMD would not confirm or deny the report but said the
council is continuing its review and would present its advice to
the home secretary on April 28th.
Cannabis was downgraded from a class B drug in
January 2004, reducing the maximum penalty for possession from five
years to two years imprisonment.
The mental health charity Rethink has sent an
open letter to Gordon Brown, in which it has called on him to base
his decision on cannabis classification solely on the evidence. It
said that cannabis use had dropped since it had been made a Class C
Drug, and claimed that this was due to greater awareness of the
mental health risks. It has advised the Prime Minister not to waste
funds on reclassifying the drug, but called on him to
invest these funds into health education.
The debate on cannabis classification must be
free from political interference, according to Nick Clegg, the
leader of the Liberal Democrats. He said that Gordon Brown "appears
to have second guessed the conclusions of the drug and misuse
advisory committee. I think this is exactly the kind of thing where
you need a dispassionate view to see what is the link between
cannabis use, its potency in its new contemporary forms, its link
to the use of other more powerful drugs. And the committee in
question does not believe...that the present categorisation should
be changed yet again."
A senior Whitehall official has told the Times
that the Prime Minister is prepared to reclassify cannabis even if
the advisory body recommends a class C category in its final
assessment.
9. What’s
new