The General Medical Council (GMC) has begun the drive to recruit a new lay member to join its governing body.
The Council, which comprises 24 members (12 medical, 12 lay), is responsible for the overall control of the organisation. It ensures that the GMC is properly managed and that the organisation fulfils its statutory and charitable purposes. Council does this by setting strategy, ensuring that in developing policy there is widespread and effective engagement with all its key interests, agreeing the annual business plan and budget, as well as holding the executive to account for the operation and performance of the GMC's functions and processes.
Chair of the GMC, Professor Peter Rubin encourages lay applicants from a variety of backgrounds. He says:
“Our statutory purpose is to protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the public by ensuring proper standards in the practice of medicine. Over the next four years our strategic priorities will be focused on four themes, which we consider will contribute to enhancing the quality of healthcare and maximising patient safety: protecting the public, helping doctors, working with partners and delivering value for money.
“I hope you are excited by the challenges that these priorities present in ensuring continued high standards of medical regulation in the UK, and that you will be inspired to apply.”
Candidates for the post will be selected by the Appointments Commission. For more information and to apply online please visit www.appointments.org.uk and search for Ref: DH10009C. Alternatively you can call 0870 240 3802 for a hard copy of the information pack or request an alternative format such as braille, large print and audio.
Notes to Editors:
For further information please contact the Media Relations Office on 020 7189 5454, out of hours 020 7189 5444, email press@gmc-uk.org, website http://www.gmc-uk.org/
The General Medical Council registers and licenses doctors to practise medicine in the UK. Our purpose is summed up in the phrase: Regulating doctors, Ensuring Good Medical Practice.
The law gives us four main functions:
- keeping up-to-date registers of qualified doctors
- fostering good medical practice
- promoting high standards of medical education and training
- dealing firmly and fairly with doctors whose fitness to practise is in doubt.
Merger of PMETB with GMC
The functions of the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board (PMETB) transferred to the GMC on 1 April 2010, creating a simpler and clearer framework for the regulation of medical education and training. All stages of medical education and training now fall under the GMC’s remit. For more information please visit http://www.gmc-uk.org/
Office of the Health Professions Adjudicator
From April 2011, the adjudication of fitness to practise cases involving doctors will transfer from the GMC to a new body called the Office of the Health Professions Adjudicator (OHPA). OHPA is being established under the Health and Social Care Act 2008. It is being created to ensure clear separation between the investigation of fitness to practise cases and the process of determining whether a professional’s fitness to practise is impaired.
To begin with, the new body will be responsible for making decisions on fitness to practise cases brought forward by the GMC and, in time, the General Optical Council. Over time, other regulators of healthcare professionals may transfer their adjudication functions to OHPA. For more information about OHPA, please visit http://www.ohpa.org.uk/
The GMC will remain the regulator for doctors, continuing to set the standards for professional practice and receiving and investigating allegations about their fitness to practise.
