GMC consultations - please respond!

Here is my response to the GMC consultations on 'credentialing' and 'generic professional capabilites':

 

"Dear GMC

As regards the two consultations:

Firstly as regards credentialing, the whole premise behind your goals is flawed.  There is no proven benefit to introducing credentialing.  It simply cannot be assumed that introducing credentialing will enhance regulation and protect patients.  Rather the opposite is more likely, credentialing is likely to result in more expensive box ticking paperwork which will distract clinicians from protecting patients and will provide no tangible gains to patients.  The benefits to credentialing should be proven before an expensive and possibly harmful bureaucracy is forced upon doctors against their will.

Secondly as regards the 'generic professional capabilities', the whole premise behind this plan is deeply flawed.  Doctors in training are already overwhelmed by a burdensome bureaucratic system that consists of largely unreliable and poorly validated assessments.  The harm done by such a flawed competency based framework are clear and well documented in the medical literature.  While the framework domains adds nothing to what is assessed by the extensive array of assessments that doctors in training are already subjected to today.  The GMC has simply not provided a clear rationale as to why such a framework is necessary.  Without a proven need the framework promises to introduce yet more burdensome bureaucracy on doctors in training at a time when service pressures are becoming increasingly unsustainable.  While the talk of assessments will simply lead to more box ticking of more poorly validated assessments which will do nothing to help standards or patients, rather the opposite.

I would therefore like to register my general lack of faith in both these consultations as the need for these proposals has not been adequately demonstrated,

First the GMC should do no harm,

regards"

 

 

I would urge all doctors to email your thoughts to educationconsultation@gmc-uk.org - do not feel obliged to use the GMC's highly constrained white space forms, simply express your opinion to them without being pidgeon holed.