We wish to remind you to renew your Professional Competence Scheme enrolment for the new PCS Year commencing 1st May 2024 - 30th April 2025.     The Medical Council registration retention form advises doctors that they must pay their PCS enrolment fee for 2024 – 2025 prior to retaining their registration with the Medical Council

Doctors will also be required to indicate on the retention form which Postgraduate Training Body they have enrolled on PCS with and declare that they have paid their enrolment fee for their PCS.  

This means that you must now pay your PCS enrolment fee for PCS year 2024 – 2025 prior to retaining your registration with the Medical Council in June 2024. 

If you are no longer on the Supervised, General, or Specialist section of the (Irish) Medical Council’s Register please notify this office by email pcs@rcsi.ie as this will allow us update our records and ensure that you do not receive unnecessary communication in relation to the PCS

 
Re-enrol by paying your fee online using your credit card click HERE

Fellows and Members of RCSI who practice in the Republic of Ireland and pay their Fellowship/Membership subscription are entitled to a discount on their PCS .   To avail of a discount on your PCS fee for 2024, you must make payment of your RCSI annual subscription FIRST through the new Fellows and Members Portal. Once you have made payment of your RCSI annual subscription, when you log into your PCS Portal, the discounted PCS amount will automatically be applied. 

If you have any difficulty with this, please do not hesitate to contact the PCS office at pcs@rcsi.ie

Please note you can still upload valid credits for the PCS term 1^st May 2023 – 30^th April 2024.  We would ask that you update and record your activities on or before Monday 3rd June 2024. 

Please note that the requirements for the PCS year 1^st May 2023 – 30^th April 2024 is that you are required to reach a total of 40 CPD credits and complete one Clinical/Practice Audit.  The 40 CPD credits can be recorded in any of the Categories (External/Internal/Personal Learning / Research or Teaching). 

You should now login to your PCS profile and review your credits.  

 If you have not:

• Identified and recorded additional credits that bring your total credits to the minimum level required, 40 CPD credits

and

• Completed one Clinical/Practice Audit

then it would be appropriate, when you complete the Annual Retention Form (ARF) with the Medical Council, to tick NO to statement 2 “I have achieved the annual minimum CPD requirements for the Scheme Year 2023 / 24   [YES/NO] “

For the 2024/25 Professional Competence Scheme Year the following applies: 

• Doctors are required to record 40 CPD credits.  These 40 cpd credis can be recorded in any CPD category (external, internal, personal learning, research/teaching).  CPD targets for each category do not apply for 2024/25
  

• Complete one clinical / practice Audit

Professional Development Plan

Creating a PDP at the beginning of each Professional Competence Scheme year encourages you to plan your activities during the year and to set out goals for your personal development. It can also be used to reflect on and monitor your progress during the year. The aim of creating a Professional Development Plan (PDP) is to document a process of self-analysis and set new and clearly definable educational goals for yourself in advance of the Professional Competence Scheme each year.

It is not currently compulsory to complete a Professional Development Plan, however it is recommended that you do so.    

Complete your Professional Development Plan and claim two CPD credits in the Internal Category

Having completed your PDP you may choose to review it with a professional colleague and you may each claim one CPD Credit in the Internal Category

At the end of the year (April 30th), you should review your PDP and assess whether you have met your goals.  You may claim one CPD credit in the Internal Category for reviewing your PDP at the end of the year. 

Full guidelines and forms are available HERE

RCSI Guidelines & Resources

RCSI will commence this Verification Process in  June 2024 where we will randomly select doctors to participate in this process for the year 1^st May 2023 – 30^th April 2024.      Please be aware that as part of the Arrangement with the Medical Council, the Training Bodies are required to undertake a verification of activities recorded by 3-5% of doctors enrolled on the Professional Competence Scheme.  RCSI will commence this Verification Process in June 2024 where we will randomly select doctors to participate in this process for the year 1^st May 2023 – 30^th April 2024.  This process will involve checking the activities that have been uploaded to a doctor’s PCS portfolio and the CPD credits assigned to each activity.  This is a supportive exercise and provides support to assist doctors in meeting the PCS requirements.   The Medical Council have indicated that doctors will be asked to make a declaration about their maintenance of professional competence during the July 2024 annual retention process.

The Medical Council requires that records are kept for a period of six years, (current PCS year plus previous five years), to fulfil obligations under the MPA 200.   GDPR places significant obligations on organisations in relation to the processing of personal data and the data protection principles are a set of rules, which we must follow to ensure that we are processing personal data in accordance with the law.

According to these principles, RCSI Professional Competence Scheme, must only collect, use and store the personal data it requires to fulfil the legitimate business purposes that it has identified. In order to ensure that it is complying with the principle of Data Minimisation, this requires us to identify the minimum amount of personal data needed to properly fulfil the business purpose. We should collect and hold no more than this minimum amount.

Furthermore, under the principle of Storage Limitation, we are required to hold personal data no longer than necessary for the purpose by which it was obtained. Ensuring personal data is disposed of when no longer needed, helps to reduce the risk that it will become inaccurate, out of date or irrelevant.

With this in mind, RCSI PCS will shortly be contacting all registered medical practitioners who have records older than six years on their PCS portfolio – that is all records from PCS year 1^st May 2018 – 30^th April 2019 will be deleted on Friday 19th July 2024

We ask that if you want to retain any of your records we would encourage you to login to your portfolio and review your personal data stored by RCSI Professional Competence Scheme, and download these documents.   Please click HERE for Guidelines on How to Download your documents / records and retain elsewhere. 

Should you have any queries, please contact Marie O'Boyle at the PCS Office pcs@rcsi.ie

On Monday, 8 July 2024 the CPD Support Scheme 2024-25 will be open for enrolment. Non consultant hospital doctors working in public hospitals that are not enrolled in a formal training scheme can avail of 3 full day courses free of charge or maximum of 20 CPD credits per year if they enrol in our CPD Support Scheme 2024-25

For more Information please click here.

Millin Meeting 2024

Theme: How patient involvement improves surgical research.

Focus on Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in research.

The importance of including the patients voice in developing relevant research questions

9.05-10.30

•  Surgical Trial presentations-  x 3 Invited Investigators (7min each) -21 min
•  Patient Orientated Research presentations x 3 Invited investigators (successful awardees of the NSRSC-PPI call) who are conducting Trials/studies to talk about how patients helped shape/direct their research (eg Core Outcome Set development/ SWATs) (21 min)
• Surgical Research Speakers selected from submitted abstracts x 5 ( 7 mins each) 1st place NSRSC medal 35 mins

10.30 -11.00 Break & poster viewing

11-11.45

How to involve patients in surgical research

1.  Derek Mitchel- IPPOSI
2. Michelle O Toole-PPI-Ignite
3. Member of the PPI committee or patient to talk about their involvement in trial (x1 or 2?)
4. How the NSRSC can support PPI research

11.45-12.30

Keynote: Dr Ori Rotstein : proposed title / guide for talk:

The Patient as a teacher to discuss his project about the program

https://www.canjsurg.ca/content/63/3/E257.long

Alternatively discuss his Randomised Controlled trial Remote Ischemic Conditioning as a Treatment for Traumatic Brain Injury (just completed Nov 2023)

 https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03176823?term=Ori%20rotstein&rank=1#study-overview 

12.30 -1.30 Lunch & poster viewing

1.30- 1.45 Surgical research presentation of Awards

1.45-2.00 Network Launch

Millin dinner- Invite members of the NSRSC-PPI committee to the meeting / dinner

Register today – The 4^th National Human Factors in Patient Safety Conference – Friday, 25 October 2024

Theme: Thinking Outside the Box in Healthcare

The 4^th National Human Factors in Patient Safety conference will bring together a community of Human Factors in Patient Safety advocates across Ireland and abroad. Don’t miss the opportunity to gain valuable knowledge and insights from Human Factors experts.

We are delighted to invite you to our annual Human Factors in Patient Safety Conference which will include contributions from:

• Dr Helen Bevan, OBE – Professor of Practice in Health and Care, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick - Rocking the boat while staying in it: How to make change happen and not get wet
• Dr Dale Whelehan – Behaviour Scientist, CEO, 4 Day Week Global – Bringing 4 to the fore, Why the 4 Day Week is better for everyone in healthcare
• Chair – Professor Eva Doherty Director of Human Factors in Patient Safety –Panel Discussion

Please note that our conference will be hybrid (Face to face and online).

Register link (In-person) -Click Here

Register link (Online) - Click Here

For more information, please visit: Click here

Act now to power-down the Surgical Suite and deliver sustainable surgical care to our patients

The RCSI Sustainability Principles and Practice in Surgery document acts as a road-map for the multi-disciplinary surgical team across the 3 pillars of sustainability - social, environmental and financial in reducing the carbon footprint of surgical care.

The surgical suite is a carbon hotspot within the hospital setting. Together we can “Act Now” to deliver net zero safe surgical care by 2050.

RCSI Sustainability Principles and Practice in Surgery Document 

For more information, please click here.