‘Highly commended’
The College has been honoured for our support for members during the pandemic.
The College’s efforts to support psychiatrists during the pandemic was recognised as RCPsych won ‘highly commended’ in the Memcom awards for Best Member Support during COVID by a large organisation.
The commendation came after the College rolled out the biggest webinar programme of any medical royal college, transformed the way we deliver exams so they could be done remotely during 2020, and worked with NHS England to provide comprehensive guidance for members on our website within days of the pandemic starting.
RCPsych President Dr Adrian James said:
"This is a real honour and it’s very much deserved, because our amazing staff team and dedicated volunteers have done a superb job of supporting our hardworking members during an extremely challenging time.”
Paul Rees, who collected the award with HR Director Marcia Cummings and our former Dean, Dr Kate Lovett, on 30 September said:
“When the pandemic struck, the mental health of people across the UK and globally was put under huge strain.
“At the College we needed to move extremely fast to migrate all our services online and continue to deliver an excellent member experience, to frontline doctors, working for the NHS and other mental health services.
“It’s a huge credit to our fantastic staff team and volunteers that we were able to do this, transforming areas of our work at an unprecedented pace, to provide members with the information, training and career progression opportunities they need and expect.”
Our submission to Memcom set out the work the College did to support members during the pandemic including:
- rolling out the biggest webinar programme of any Medical Royal College
- transitioning to online exams to help over 3,200 trainees move forward in their careers
- providing online guidance on how to handle COVID-19 within the NHS within days of the pandemic starting
- boosting recruitment into psychiatry via our Choose Psychiatry campaign, which helps ensure 100% of core training places were filled across the UK
- securing our highest level of media coverage ever, with an aggregate audience of 1.25bn.
Shortlisted for other awards
The College was also shortlisted for several other Memcom awards. They included:
- Membership Organisation of the Year
- Best Website of a Membership Organisation
- Best Podcast
- Best Magazine for a Professional Association or Membership Organisation
- Best Sustainability Initiative.
Our President Dr Adrian James said:
“The fact RCPsych were shortlisted for these other awards shows the exceptional quality of work the College team is doing across so many areas of our work.”
Back to 14 October 2021 Members' update.