The General Medical Council (GMC) has released new curricula standards that shift the focus of postgraduate training to include communication and team working skills.
The General Medical Council (GMC) has released new curricula standards that shift the focus of postgraduate training to include communication and team working skills.
The new standards follow the generic professional capabilities (GPC) framework, also published this week by the GMC, which covers a broader area of professional practice aimed at making postgraduate courses more flexible.
The launch follows the publication, in March, of the GMC’s flexible training review, which identified several problems with the way postgraduate training is currently developed and organised.
In a statement, the GMC said trainees face barriers when they want to switch specialty and training cannot adapt quickly enough to the changing needs of patients.
Medical colleges and faculties have begun to work together to identify aspects of training that are similar to, or depend on, content from other specialties.
Medical colleges and faculties will update all 103 existing postgraduate medical curricula against the GMC’s new standards, with a target to complete the process by 2020.
Charlie Massey, chief executive of the GMC, said the new standards ‘will support greater flexibility in postgraduate training’.
He said: ‘Medical training in the UK is high quality, but as well as producing doctors who are technically proficient it is important they are equipped with the broader professional skills they need to become and stay good professionals.
He added that the new standards aim to ‘deliver a reformed and reinvigorated system of postgraduate training’ but called on the UK government to make the law less restrictive, so that the council can be ‘more agile’ in approving training.
