Become a College External Advisor

The General Medical Council’s quality assurance framework (QAF) requires Deanery/NHSE regions to ensure external scrutiny of the quality management process.

At specialty levels, such advice will normally come from the Medical Royal Colleges and Faculties.

The QAF acknowledges that as part of their quality management activity Deans “in conjunction with the Medical Royal Colleges and the Faculties may need to carry out a form of local visiting with the guide of providing educational training opportunities”. Visits “should include expertise external to the programme being reviewed.”

The role of the External Advisor (EA) is to provide expert impartial advice and scrutiny of all processes of delivery, assessment and evaluation of specialty training according to the GMC Quality Assurance Framework (QAF). The QAF advises that the host Deanery/HEE Local Office must be able to confirm the independence of EAs.

The College’s pool of EAs reduced during Covid-19, which left the College unable to fulfil its requirement of 10% externality as per COPMeD’s Gold Guide.

In 2024 a project began to increase the pool of College External Advisors, including:

  • one externality visit per Specialty/Sub-Specialty Advisory Committee (SAC/SSAC) member was written into our SAC/SSAC terms of reference.
  • re-opening of recruitment processes
  • an EA training day, held in May 2024.

While this has increased our EA numbers, we still need more, which is why we have opened our recruitment processes again with a second training day marked for October 2024.

Why become an External Advisor?

EAs have an important role to play in the externality of ARCP panels and interview panels. They ensure objectivity is represented and act as a critical friend.

How to become an External Advisor

We welcome applications from a broad range of individuals from any background, as it is important to us to have feedback from various individuals with different clinical and personal experiences, to provide insights into the quality of ARCP panels.

There are some requirements which are mandatory to ensure that experience is broad enough to ensure high quality representation from the College.

To become an external advisor, we ask that you have:

  • experience as an educational supervisor or other higher educational role
  • a leadership role within your own Deanery
  • five years’ experience consultancy (or two years with other educational/clinical experience) and
  • up-to-date Equality and Diversity Training.

You must also hold valid College membership and Specialist Registration.

Next steps

  1. Register your interest by emailing psychiatrytraining@rcpsych.ac.uk.
  2. Check you meet all the requirements.
  3. Attend our External Advisor Training Day.
  4. Receive your certificate and start attending ARCP panel sessions.

Training

The training day is a half-day session virtually via Microsoft Teams. This is a mixture of interactive and didactic training led by Specialist Advisor for Quality Assurance, Dr Suyog Dhakras.

The next training day will be held in October 2024.

If you are interested in becoming an EA and would like to know more, please contact psychiatrytraining@rcpsych.ac.uk .

Read more to receive further information regarding a career in psychiatry