nMRCGP

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MRCGP - an intro

Components of MRCGP & When to Take What

The RCGP website is your essential resource for all the latest information and guidance. It is being continually updated, therefore if it says anything different from what’s on this website: believe the college! http://www.rcgp.org.uk/

nMRCGP components

KEY POINT ONE: responsibility

It is the responsiblity of the trainee to ensure that they complete the appropriate assessments and build up a record of their training and evidence of competence AT THE APPROPRIATE TIMES through the e-portfolio. It will be you who tells your trainer/supervisor when you are ready to do a specific type of assessment (not the other way around).

KEY POINT TWO: 'needs further development'

Please do not see 'needs further development' as a failure. We expect you to have quite a few 'needs further development' especially if you are in ST1 or ST2. If you had all "competent" or "excellent" in ST1 or ST2, we'd be worried - how can you have no learning needs at such an early stage in your training.

KEY POINT THREE: Hospital Consultants

Some of your hospital colleagues may not be that familiar with what they are doing in the assessments. Whilst they are being trained up, we would urge you to get a good understanding of how the assessments work and what each domain or competency means so that you are empowered to help your consultant. In this way, we are sure that your hospital colleagues will get the hang of them in no time and really help you to get the best out of them. So, please help them.

Key Principles

* Whilst the process is Trainee led, this will be supported by your educational supervisor

* There are 6 monthly reviews throughout training at which your progress will be reviewed and actions agreed

* Loads of different things happening in parallel throughout the 3 years

* Plan now to avoid last minute panic

The GP Curriculum and MRCGP

The curriculum covers the knowledge and skills that all GP trainees need to learn in order to deliver the highest quality standards of patient care.

Familiarise yourself with the GP curiculum; it's a big document but the more you look at it, the more familiar you'll become. All components of MRCGP are mapped to the competencies in the curriculum.

RULES, REGULATIONS AND REQUIREMENTS CHANGE OFTEN. PLEASE REVISIT THE RCGP AND PMETB WEBSITES FREQUENTLY BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T ONLY YOU LOSE OUT!

PMETB stands for Postgraduate Medical Education Training Board and is the body that approves training programmes and examinations for all medical specialties. In terms of general practice, it approves things like the GP curriculum, standards required for training posts and end assessments like the MRCGP exam. The RCGP is the body that has been seconded to develop these things and put them out to Deaneries. The Deaneries are there to ensure what has been set nationally is implemented locally. It is the programme directors, trainers and consultants who actually help to deliver some of this stuff.

How Can I Prepare for the MRCGP?

There is tonnes of stuff available on the RCGP website. You should go there and check it out www.rcgp.org.uk . However, because there is simply so much detailed stuff on each component, you might end up missing the bigger picture and because of that we provide some guidance on this website to re-emphasise some of the important bits. You'll also find some stuff that we have developed locally ourselves to help you along. However, the stuff we concentrate on is the workplace based assessment (WPBA) as that is the area where we can help you the most. We are sure you can appreciate there is little we can do in terms of guiding you about the Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) for instance.

Here are some important points we felt it might be worth passing on after having been to a recent ARCP panel meeting:

What the curriculum headings mean:
Teaching, mentoring and clinical supervision means the teaching etc which the trainee has done, NOT the educational etc experiences which they have received
Management in General Practice means organisational management, NOT clinical management of patients

DOPS
There’s no point recording previous experience which hasn’t been directly observed. It’s essential to get the e portfolio entries for the compulsory DOPS put in by whoever observed the procedure. If this isn’t done, PMETB will bounce your e portfolio when it’s submitted for CCT at the end of ST3. Also, the procedure has to be on a patient and not, for example, in a skills lab.

CSA preparation
The RCGP representative who was at the panel strongly recommended that some COTs are done not on video but with directly observed consultations, i e the trainer sits in with the trainee. This will help trainees get used to consulting with someone watching. Also, it means that a range of normal consultations are observed by the trainer, not just the good ones which trainees tend to select for COTs

OOH
The educational reason for OOH is for trainees to acquire the relevant competencies. Simply recording the number of sessions worked doesn’t provide evidence of this. Trainees should make sure that the paper OOH workbook sheets are completed by their supervisor, scanned and uploaded to the e portfolio as evidence of the educational outcomes of the session, as well as making sure that they’ve done the required number of sessions

Signature on educational contract
Apparently this keeps disappearing so the Educational Supervisor may need to renew it every time the trainee changes post

Your Local MRCGP

Course For current information on future MRCGP Preparation Courses please follow this link: FACULTY CALENDAR