Another council on zoom. It is bizarrely stressful/tiring.

anyway
Very very pleased to have presented motion to council on appraisal. This was very kindly seconded by Dr Carter Singh who has also been raising concerns for some time. This motion had been several months in the organising and had originated with Carter and myself.

A few months ago Victoria Tzortziou Brown, Carl Heneghan and I wrote a BMJ analysis of appraisal
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3415
concluding “Insufficient evidence is available to know whether it is possible to accurately assess fitness to practise prospectively, and whether appraisal is the most sensitive, specific, valid, and reliable tool for this.49 Other revalidation models should be explored—for example, online self-declarations, clinical audits, and data signals that could indicate concerns—but given previous difficulties 50 this may be a problem with no ready solution. We would favour this honesty and the admission that we need to design a new solution, while pausing appraisal, in the same way that we would not recommend a costly and unevidenced clinical intervention that might do more harm than good.”

The motion read

to call that doctors, no matter their date of appraisal, are informed of local and nationalservices who are able to support them.
b.to call for a re-suspension of appraisal for up to one year during the covid-19 pandemic(while making it available to doctors on request).
c.to create a working group to write a College policy paper on appraisal and revalidation,after examining alternative cost-effective means of revalidation and appraisal whilstensuring clinical safety and quality and addressing issues of workload and evidence.

All were passed with unanimous (a) and very large majorities.