|
 Welcome
to the 17th edition of the General and Community Faculty
Newsletter. Click on a heading to go directly to that item, or
scroll down the page. There are links within items to other
pages on this site, or to send an email, and at the end of each
item there is a 'back to top' link to bring you back to this
contents area.
Please note: the long articles are individual documents which
will open in Word.
Contents:
|
Editorial
Claire Flannigan, Hazel Johnson, Rashid
Zaman, Neil Masson, Cyrus Abassian, Pallavi Pandit
eNewsletters - welcome to
the 3rd wholly electronic edition of Root & Branch,
but does that name sound a bit dated to you? Please send us your
suggestions for a new name, and keep any other comments coming
too.
We’ve just participated in a teleconference on
eNewsletters for all faculties, sections and SIGs within the
College. Two ideas we’d like to take forward are:
- Using the standard format (as in the monthly
College eNewsletter) as that is easy to read and navigate
- Working on a quick and easy way to give
instant feedback on articles, polls and burning questions, so that
the newsletter is truly interactive. We’d like to include something
that could be as simple as a click or two as we realise that the
pace of work is now so fast that for many of you sending an email
is too slow!
Clinical and faculty
structures - this is an issue that is being
discussed in the College and on which we’d really like to hear your
views. Do our existing clinical and faculty structures facilitate
or hinder service development and delivery? We know that many of
you are working beyond the traditional “working age” boundaries
already, sometimes including those as young as 14 or over 65,
mild/moderate learning disabilities, prisons and community forensic
populations, delivering CBT, and working Emergency Departments. It
is probably time to undertake a more thorough review and you will
hear more about this in due course, but please do tell
us what you think, now.
back to
top
Chair’s message
Networking past, present and
future - Dr Michelle Hampson
Past: the Faculty
Conference
Thanks to academic secretaries, Maxine Patel
and Mark Taylor, and the conference sub-committee for devising such
an interesting programme. You thought so too - despite a bigger
venue, we had to declare the conference full 2 weeks beforehand to
avoid disappointment on the day. The speakers gave much food for
thought, and there was very lively chatter in the breaks. Our next
conference is 13 - 14 October 2011 at the Newcastle Hilton, a venue
highly rated before. It will definitely be a case of booking early,
as I’m sure the team will deliver another great programme.
Present: Are you networked -
if not, why not join today?
Our networks are thriving. Members of the
prison psychiatry group met with Louis Appleby in his new role as
National Clinical Director for Health & Criminal Justice; the
EIP network is developing a position statement on the value of EIP
for commissioners; and the CRHT network is debating accreditation.
The lead of the primary care group, Linda Gask, has been made a
Fellow of the RCGP, a real achievement. New networks are being
considered for in-patient psychiatrists, and perhaps a CMHT or
recovery network for those who don’t work in the specialist teams?
What do you think? Tell us or join up.
Trainees, you have a network and so why not
join and share ideas and problems? You have a new SpR lead -
Ashish Rana - so give him plenty to feed into the Executive
via email.
Future: Green and not
rosy
This year we endeavour to help trusts reduce
their carbon footprint, in line with UK Government’s commitment, by
80% in 40 years. In medicine, over 50% of footprint comes from
procurement - we want to know if this applies to mental health too,
by developing methodology to enable trusts to calculate and reduce
their carbon use. The Executive is playing its part; we’ve reduced
our meetings from 4 to 3 per year, and will give you an estimate of
what that saved soon. The College is signed up to the 10:10
campaign which aims to achieve a 10% reduction in carbon use
from the 2010 baseline. Climate change has a huge impact on health
globally so it is vital to act now. We have a small email
network of enthusiasts; let us know if you want to join.
Faculty Elections
Nomination papers are out now for a new Chair,
Finance Officer and half the Executive members. If it isn’t for
you, please encourage someone you think would do a good job - that
is how I was persuaded to be Chair. I have greatly enjoyed the
opportunities to influence policy and to be better linked with
colleagues.
Policy
We now have the Health Bill and the Mental
Health Strategy. The Public Health White Paper (December 2010) is
also worth a look (it will be the basis of Public Health Strategy);
the College is working really hard to ensure that this Strategy
fully recognises the importance of mental health. More information
is available from the College’s
Policy Unit.
back to
top
Networks and
trainees
Prison Psychiatry Network - Nick
Kosky
Membership of this network is holding around
the 75 mark – there are still psychiatrists working regularly in
prison who don’t know about the network or haven’t joined up. Can I
remind those members that membership is free and carries no
responsibilities other than deleting unwanted messages from your
inbox!
On a serious note, we have had a network
seminar at the Faculty meeting in October 2010 which was well
attended; Rajesh Nadkarni and Steve Brown talked about some very
pragmatic service developments in forensic psychiatry from their
neck of the woods and we had the pleasure of hearing Brian Docherty
give us a informative and extremely amusing account of his
experiences as a prison GP, tempered by great clinical experience
and compassion. We also had a couple of our members – Adarsh and
myself – talking about “what does good look like” with regard to a
prison in-reach service and treating ADHD in young offenders at a
meeting in Leeds on the 8 December 2010. The morning part of
the session was ably chaired by Rob Baskind, another one of our
network members.
Future work for the next year looks to be
revisiting that thorny problem of standards and getting our teeth
into making some representations into the Commissioning process and
underpinning structures.
back to top
Training
Maudsley launches new training strategy -
John Moriaty
We hear that the Maudsley is launching a new
education and training strategy. A report issued by the South
London and Maudsley NHS Trust and Kings College London (who
have come together with Guys and St. Thomas’ Hospitals and Kings
College Hospital to form an Academic Health Sciences Centre [AHSC]
called Kings Health Partners) details ambitious plans to
reinvigorate psychiatric training at the famous hospital.
Simon Wessely, Mike Farrell, Amy Iversen, Teif
Davies and others have put together a strategy across
undergraduate, postgraduate, clinical and academic training. One of
the key aims is to improve the experience of undergraduates and
foundation year doctors with an eye to the national difficulties
recruiting to the speciality. In addition the Trust has created a
new post of Director of Postgraduate Psychiatric Training and a
previous Treasurer of this faculty, John Moriarty, has just been
appointed and will take up his post this April.
So what can trainees expect to see? (View the
full strategy document.)
John tells us that he believes there needs to
be more clarity for trainees in terms of allocation of posts, so
that more structured educational goals can be rolled out over
several years of training under the guidance of a single
educational supervisor. Training experiences also need to be
evaluated and constantly revised. The Trust is looking at
innovative simulation-based training for on-call and emergency
settings and is keen to evaluate these in a programme of
educational research. There is still further work to be done in
shifting the culture around workplace based assessments to make
them understood as genuinely formative. In addition, there are
plans to develop more coherent training paths in skills such as
teaching, management and leadership to complement the primary focus
on clinical training (as well, of course, as careers in academic
psychiatry which have always been part of the Maudsley’s focus).
John adds, “I think our trainees should aim for the highest
possible standards and we therefore have a duty to make it possible
for them to realise those aims”.
back to top
back to
top
Notices
Faculty
Elections
Your attention is drawn to the forthcoming
elections for Faculty Chair, Finance Officer and five members of
the Faculty Executive Committee. Nominations should be sent
on the correct form to Sue Duncan at the College. The full Notice
of Election and the nomination form are available to download from
the
Faculty web page (under ‘latest news’ on the homepage). The
closing date for nominations is 21 February 2011.
Certificate of Eligibility
for Specialist Registration (CESR) – Evaluators
needed
The Royal College of Psychiatrists has set up
a forum of psychiatrists from all specialties to assist with the
assessment of CESR applications. However, we are still
looking to recruit more evaluators to relieve current pressure on
existing members particularly in the specialty of general
psychiatry.
The College’s role is to assess individual
applications for Specialist Registration in Psychiatry. The
College works closely with the General Medical Council to
ensure that a robust system of assessment is established for all
applicants who apply for specialist registration under this
route.
The evaluator’s role is to assess applicants’
qualifications, training and experience according to criteria
outlined in the Advanced College Curriculum's to determine whether
the applicant meets the criteria specified by the GMC and the
College, and to further determine whether their competencies are
equivalent both in clinical and theoretical content to those of a
UK holder of the Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) in
psychiatry.
Remuneration
An honorarium of £100 redeemable towards the
price of College books, CPD, conferences, training and memorabilia
or Marks and Spencers vouchers – per application.
- Up to 5 CPD hours per year
T
he GMC has set strict deadlines which the
College must adhere to under the current arrangements within the
Service Level Agreement. If these are not met the College will
incur financial penalties. We therefore need evaluators, who are
reliable, IT competent, comfortable to work with complex documents
on screen and be able to devote 4 to 5 hours (or more) per
application. All applications are sent to evaluators via
email or a hard copy if requested.
A training day has been scheduled for Monday
28 March 2011 which will demonstrate procedures for assessing CESR
applications and provide examples of a robust assessment
criteria.
If you would be interested in offering your
services to assist the College please refer to the evaluator
remit, for eligibility requirements and complete the
application form – both are on the
Equivalence Committee page of the College website.
Contact person:Lena Hartley, CESR
Administrator Tel: 020 7235 2351 x 6139 Fax: 020 7234 7976
back to
top
Medical students
2011
Student Essay Prize.
The competition is open to all clinical
medical students in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
The prize is £500 plus a day’s free registration at the Faculty
Residential meeting for the day of presentation.
The title is for this year’s essay is " Using
the available evidence, discuss the future and present diagnostic
classification of schizophrenia". The essay may be up to 3,000
words long, with a 250 word summary, and must be emailed to
Candace Gillies-Wright
by 30 June 2011.
Back to Faculty
homepage