If you are registered in the General, Specialist or Supervised Division and practise in Ireland for 30 or more days per year you will be required to pay your Professional Competence Scheme enrolment fee for the PCS year, commencing 1^st May 2018 and ending 30^th April 2019, before completing your retention of registration with the Medical Council.

When retaining your registration, you must declare the name of your Professional Competence Scheme and the date when you paid your 2018/19 enrolment fee.

If you have any questions about your PCS enrolment please contact pcs@rcsi.ie

As we approach the end of the Professional Competence Scheme year 30^th April 2018, we wish to remind you that you are required to record and upload certificates / proof of attendance for activities which you have participated in since May 2017.

The Statement of Participation for this year will be generated in May 2018 and will reflect what you have recorded on your Portfolio.  This Statement of Participation is the document that you will need to submit to the Medical Council if selected for their audit.  The Medical Council will require those who are re-registering to declare that they are in compliance with their requirements for maintaining competence.

A code of practice for surgeons was launched at the 2018 RCSI Charter Day Meeting in February 2018.   Developed by RCSI, the professional training body for surgery in Ireland, the Code of Practice for Surgeons aims to consolidate the national guidelines which surgeons are obliged to follow. It also provides guidance on how a surgeon should deal with a situation where they feel their ability to meet their professional responsibilities is compromised.

According to RCSI President Professor John Hyland, “Supporting surgeons in their professional practice is at the core of our responsibility as the professional training body for surgery in Ireland. Surgical care is now being delivered in a very complex and rapidly changing environment. It is neither possible nor desirable to produce a ‘rule book’ that covers every situation. Instead, we have set out to articulate a straight-forward set of principles that surgeons can use to inform their own practice.”

The Code also provides guidance to surgeons on what they can do when they feel their ability to meet their professional responsibilities is compromised.  Professor Hyland explained that “it is appropriate that high professional standards are expected of surgeons. Increasingly complex demands in a challenging healthcare environment, are, however, putting surgeons under considerable pressure, resulting in burnout for some, and in others opting out of working on-call or choosing to retire early. This Code seeks to acknowledge this reality and provide guidance which helps surgeons in their everyday practice.”

The PCS handbook is an overview of the PCS requirements and incorporates all the guidelines and resources in relation to the PCS online portal - click here for the handbook.

If you would like to receive a ‘print’ copy of this handbook please forward your mailing address to pcs@rcsi.ie and we will be happy to post a copy of the handbook to you.

We also launched a range of new online resources to help users navigate the portfolio and these are available here

Please also visit our ‘useful links’ section on the website where there are a number of useful documents and templates.

Your PCS portfolio will remain as “unverified” until such time as you are selected for an RCSI verification audit.  We are required by the Medical Council to verify the portfolio contents of 3 – 5% of participants every year.  We commence this Verification Process in May /June and those who are selected for verification this year will be notified by email.

This is a supportive exercise aimed to promote confidence in what doctors are recording, identify best practices in maintaining competence, identify shortfalls and provide support to assist doctors who find it difficult to meet the Professional Competence Scheme requirements.

RCSI can now reflect leave from clinical practice, of greater than three months, on the Annual Statement of Participation.  Registered Medical Practitioners should inform RCSI of leave taken during the PCS year.  This may be done by writing or emailing the RCSI pcs@rcsi.ie and giving the outline of the reason for leave e.g.  maternity, sick, compassionate, sabbatical or overseas leave and the duration, if known.  The Medical Council have asked that practitioners declare this leave in a prospective manner (if possible) stating the reason for the leave.  We are not required to collect precise details for the leave but the Medical Council may ask for this, if you are audited by them.