Revalidation will fail if it places an unbearable burden on the profession, the Department of Health has been warned.
Dr Jonathan Fielden, the BMA’s consultants committee chair, has told the DH’s revalidation team that doctors are increasingly worried about how much the process is going to cost individuals.
He has also raised concerns about the role of the Responsible Officer (RO) - who will sign off doctors’ revalidation at trust level - which is turning into a “massive” job for medical directors.
The BMA’s Annual Representatives Meeting recently called for the RO to be separated from the role of medical director and be made independent of employers. The fear was that if medical directors acted as ROs there could be potential bias and conflict of interest.
BMA Northern Ireland consultants committee chair Stephen Austin said that doctors with contractual disputes with their employers could feel under pressure to drop such issues out of fear it might influence their revalidation.
The meeting also called for the costs of revalidation to be funded by government, unrealistically estimated at £70m at the outset. Dr Fielden said he suspected that the government would not want to put any more money into the process than was absolutely necessary.
Although he said the revalidation committtee, which included the chief medical officer, was listening to the profession’s concerns. “We are beginning to see some change. We believe that the initial stances taken by many sides are now being focussed by the financial realities and that people are understanding that whatever comes in must be do-able, it must not cost a vast amount of money and must not take a vast amount of time,” he said.
He also cautioned that there were some difficulties in ROs working independently of their employers because of the requirements of employment law. Trust boards would want to have a say because as employers they had responsiblities for their employees. He said there would unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all solution.
The BMA is now waiting to see if the profession’s concerns have been taken into account in reports on the statutory changes that will be needed to implement revalidation and on the role of the RO which are due to be published in the next few weeks.
Dr Fielden pledged that the BMA would be taking a “robust” stance. “If revalidation is not achievable then it doesn’t matter how hard they try to impose it, it will not happen,” he warned.
Tags: Revalidation
