Tried and tested revalidation management system (PReP)

Validated colleague and patient 360 feedback tool endorsed by the RCGP (Doctor 360)

Highest quality appraiser training delivered by highly qualified trainers

The newly combined revalidation management system and colleague and patient 360 feedback tool offers:

a fully integrated system with single sign on for users

GMC compliance of all systems with a money back guarantee

a dedicated Helpdesk for user support

flexible payment terms

Commenting on this collaboration, Jenny King, Health Practice Leader, at Edgecumbe said: “This combination provides clients with Edgecumbe’s unrivalled expertise in medical appraisal together with the first class IT solution that is PReP”.

Premier IT’s revalidation lead, Simon Monkman, continues: “the combined strength of our businesses ensures that healthcare organisations everywhere will benefit from the best revalidation tools available today, with the highest level of validation and implementation for both primary and secondary care clients”.

Contact us to find out more about how we can help your organisation under the new alliance.

A relaxed and informal seminar to give delegates the opportunity to share experiences, network and discuss the key challenges ahead in the implementation and ongoing management of appraisal and revalidation.

Book your place: http://revalidation.premierit.com/roadshow

This suggests that there is a need for NHS organisations to build and strengthen their appraisal systems ahead of 2012 to ensure they are ready for revalidation.

If you think you would benefit from an expert external review of your appraisal system contact Edgecumbe’s appraisal lead, Caroline Taplin on 01179 258822. Edgecumbe’s appraisal quality assurance report will provide you with an up to date assessment of your appraisal system together with clear recommendations on how to achieve the required standards.

Edgecumbe are sponsoring a Consultant Selection conference with Healthcare Events on the 9th June in Manchester.

If you are interested in attending, click here for full details

Here Megan Joffe explains why more and more Trusts are prioritising this area for attention.

How much time and energy at your Trust goes towards selecting a new consultant colleague?

Given that the cost associated with a consultant over the course of their working life in your team or hospital is likely to be more - probably much more – than the cost of a new home, the question is, is it sufficient to:

• Ask HR to write a job description and person specification

• Ask the candidates to prepare a presentation on their ideas for the future of the department

• Meet half an hour before the panel interview with other panel members to discuss who will ask which questions

• Read their application and CV – particularly noting who they have worked with and for, where they trained and how many research papers they have written?

Using such a process with how much confidence could you answer these questions about your successful candidate?

• Is the candidate likely to be as valuable a team member as team leader?

• What type of leadership style are they most likely to display?

• How do they react to conflict? How do they manage conflict?

• Can they persuade reluctant others to a new way of thinking/working? How are they likely to do this?

• How does their behaviour change when they are under pressure?

• How easily will they fit in with your current team?

• What will they bring to the team (other than their specific technical skills) that will make this a better team?

• If a new consultant how are they likely to manage the transition from trainee to consultant?

Importantly, will you be able to provide evidence that is beyond what they said in answer to your questions?

How many sources of evidence can you provide? Remember too that it is easy enough to create a positive impression during a 45 minute interview – haven’t you done so yourself? First impressions can be wrong, we know that we tend to recruit in our image – does your department need more of you or someone with a different set of skills and new attitudes?

We know that the following makes a difference to your selection process:

• A panel trained in observation and structured interviewing

• A process consisting of a variety of exercises requiring situational judgement so that triangulating evidence can be obtained

• The use of psychometrics to inform observations and appropriate questions

Using all of these rather than only one method incrementally increases the predictive validity of making a good selection decision. These techniques can also help you to select out those candidates who will not work well in your context, culture and team.

Edgecumbe Health in association with Healthcare Events are co-sponsoring their second Consultant Conference this time in Manchester after last year’s successful event in London. We have put together an exciting programme of speakers to give you an understanding of best practice; successful use of new methodology; problems associated with implementing a new system; and the legal implications of introducing a new selection process. Hear from experts and users including Medical Directors, Clinical Directors and Human Resource Professionals.

Read on for more information including news of launch events

In the spirit of continual improvement we are unveiling some improvements to our online tool for colleague and patient feedback at the end of February.

Based on positive feedback from over 1500 doctors who have used Doctor 360 since 2009 we are implementing a number of improvements to the look and functionality of the tool. These improvements will mean an even better user-experience, greater time efficiency and more flexibility for Trusts and Doctors to use the tool in a way that works best for them.

We are monitoring updates from the GMC and the RST regarding revalidation plans and are confident that Doctor 360 meets all proposed criteria for colleague and patient feedback, along with general best practice guidelines.

We are holding two free to attend half-day events:

Manchester - 17^th March 2011 at Manchester Conference Centre

London - 18^th March 2011 at Royal College of Anaesthetists

These events will showcase the newly improved Colleague and Patient Feedback tool as well as discussion around successfully implementing Colleague and Patient Feedback within a Strengthened Appraisal system. This will include lessons learned from pilots we have recently been involved in and some of our clients will be talking about their experiences. It will be a great chance to network and share best practice with your colleagues from Trusts around the UK.

Please get in touch if you would like to know more about our Colleague and Patient Feedback tool or our events in March.

The current environment is a challenging one – as it has been for some years now. The constant reminder in the media of the impending cuts and forecasts of doom and gloom and the actual day to day challenges of doing more with less provide a demanding context. The pressure seems to be relentless.

How do you deal with this adversity? Do you flourish or flounder; cope or collapse?

Do you have the resources to cope with the day to day and focus in the face of these potential threats? What is the difference between the person who seems to cope and take it all in their stride and indeed to thrive while others lose focus and energy and experience extended periods of low moods. The difference between these individuals is more than the difference between being an optimist and pessimistic although that certainly has an impact. The difference is often down to resilience.

Some of us are naturally more resilient than others – we were born that way; others have learned through experience (sometimes bitter) to ‘toughen up’; others of us have very low thresholds for tolerating pressure and stress. Susan Kobasa’s important research conducted in 1985 found that those who were more resilient – better able to cope with pressure and stress – possessed what she called hardiness.

Those who were more hardy had developed a pattern of behaviour and attitudes which helped them to see stress as a normal part of life and therefore to cope more easily. The features of these coping behaviours were based on differences in attitudes to challenge, control and commitment.

Challenge: those who viewed the stresses and demands as a challenge - as something to work on and engage with rather than something to surrender to - coped better. Taking the attitude that this was a challenge to be managed enabled them to feel stimulated rather than overwhelmed. It energised rather than drained them.

Commitment: those who remained involved, engaged and connected with others rather than withdrawing and becoming isolated found life easier to cope with. Focusing on commitment enabled them to feel supported rather than alone. It helped them understand and get perspective.

Control: those who tried to find aspects of the situation they could control, who continued to try to influence events and did not waste mental and physical effort on those aspects that were outside of their control did better. Feeling in control empowered them rather than feeling hopeless and helpless.

We can learn to be hardy. Each of us needs to find the right balance between too little or too much commitment, control and challenge. Finding the right balance for yourself may help you to understand what is going on around you better and to reflect on what you might or might not be doing which could make your personal situation better or worse. You will develop hardiness to resist panic and find opportunities or understanding that leaves you feeling calm, capable and competent.

This is not to say that if you are hardy that you will enjoy the pressure and stress or that you will never find it difficult, annoying or become down hearted. Instead you are likely to manage it rather than let it manage you. You are more likely to be mindful of how it is impacting you and take action if that impact is something that you don’t like. You will be better able to resist doing or saying the first thing that comes to mind which you might regret later. You will be easier to live and work with because you will be able to empathise with others and not focus only on your own needs – you will get support. Your approach to problem-solving is likely to be focused and realistic rather than scatter-gunned. In short, you will feel that you are coping rather than crashing!

The Responsible Officer

January 2011: Implementation and Beyond

As part of our continued effort to support medical professionals throughout the appraisal and revalidation process, we will be attending The Responsible Officer Conference in February 2011.

“This one day second national conference will provide delegates with a practical guide to developing the role of the Responsible Officer for January 2011 implementation and beyond. Chairman, Dr Neil Deuchar, Medical Director (Mental Health) and Revalidation Lead, NHS West Midlands opens the conference with an introduction to the day. Simon Bennett, Head of Clinical Governance, Department of Health will follow with a national update on the Responsible Officer, roles and responsibilities, supporting the Responsible Officer role at a local, regional and national level, conflicts of interest, working with doctors in non mainstream roles, the impact of the white paper and health reforms and lessons from various pilot sites.

The conference features a presentation entitled ‘the Responsible Officer in Primary Care: the impact of the white paper and introduction to GP consortia in place of PCTs’ and will discuss planning for the changes ahead, ensuring the role id resourced and supported, developing and assessing the clinical governance and accountability systems, communicating the changes across the organisation and learning from a pilot site.” (Healthcare Events)

Conference details can be found at http://www.healthcare-events.co.uk/event/585

We recently began a survey of all doctors who have used our Doctor 360 product since February 2009 when we last upgraded our questionnaires and online tool. We are pleased to have had around 300 responses to the survey in the last two weeks with extremely positive feedback so far.

Many thanks to everyone who took the trouble to provide feedback so far.

Highlights from the survey were:

• 90% doctors agree that the online tool was easy to navigate.

• Over 80% doctors agree that the questionnaires are relevant.

• 65% doctors completed the questionnaire in less than 15 minutes.

• Over 70% doctors completed the 360 process and received their report in less than 6 weeks.

• 80% doctors said that the report provided useful information for their appraisal.

This confirms that our questionnaires, process and online system are working well for the vast majority, and leading to “useful” and “constructive” feedback reports for doctors. Having said that, there are areas where we believe we can improve so we are now using all of the feedback we have gathered over the last 2 years in a full review and upgrade of our Doctor 360 product and online system.

(Most used words in comments from doctors can be seen in the word diagram above - font size is proportionate to frequency of words used.)

For those of you who couldn’t attend, the main headlines from the conference were:

1. Multi-Source Feedback (360°) There will not be just one MSF tool approved in England. The GMC will approve a number of providers once criteria are confirmed through pilots this year.

This is not the case in Scotland. They are looking to appoint one MSF tool.

2. Revalidation will be a single process The main issue under debate currently is - Are Appraisers equipped to be both Judge and Appraiser? This ties in with whether the Appraiser should be from the same speciality. The Royal Colleges and GMC support Appraisers from the same speciality as only they can judge if the supporting information for Speciality Frameworks is appropriate (reference Appendix 2 “The Way Ahead” GMC Consultation Paper).

RST results from the Merseyside pilot in 2009 seem to suggest that appraisers from outside of the appraisees’ speciality would be ok.

3. Responsible Officers To support revalidation being a single process the Responsible Officer role and those who will be ROs will be decided by October/this autumn.

4. Early Adopters for Revalidation These will now commence in the spring of 2012.

The extra year is not to extend the pathfinder pilots. It will be used to consolidate findings from pathfinder pilots and run smaller projects to tease out any further problems highlighted by the pathfinder pilot sites. If the pathfinder pilot sites find certain assessments for Supporting Information more cost effective than others they will run with these and drop the more costly ones.

5. Phased roll out of revalidation This will be 2012 – 2017.

6. Appraiser Training - skills It is felt that Appraisers will need to be given support and training in assessing portfolios to enable them to make a judgement on the supporting information presented.

There is information for individual doctors who are looking to fund a multi-source feedback (MSF) report for themselves, as we know that there are many of you who are looking to get ahead of the game in preparation for future revalidation processes, or indeed simply realise that MSF is an extremely useful and rewarding tool in terms of professional and personal development. You should find all the information you require on the How it works for Doctors page and you can start the process today using our online ordering and payment system.

We have also provided information for Trusts who are implementing MSF on a large scale across their organisations. The service we can provide is much more than the online tool. At Edgecumbe we have vast experience of appraisal within the NHS and are able to help with all aspects of the appraisal and revalidation process in your organisation, including appraisal strategy, management, communication, training and quality assurance. As reported in Annex 3 of the recent GMC Revalidation: The Way Ahead document, implementation of the MSF tool within a Trust will be just as important as the specific tool itself and there will be criteria to adhere to with both. Not only are we confident that Doctor 360° complies with the draft criteria we will make sure that we continue to comply in the future.

We will also help Trusts with implementation and administration by sharing best practice and lessons we have learned along the way. We will try to do just that through the pages of this blog. So please get in touch if you have any queries regarding Doctor 360° or the appraisal process as a whole, and if you have any feedback on the process good or bad.

We would love to hear from you.