News: Reaching out to public and doctors

28 September 2009

A new Reference Community is set to help the GMC hear from members of the public and doctors.

The Reference Community is set to change the way the GMC works, enabling us to gain further perspectives from the public and from doctors.

Earlier this year, the GMC Council agreed to establish a Reference Community consisting of 25 members of the public and 25 doctors to build upon the work of the former Patient and Public Reference Group.

The new Reference Community will act as a sounding board on emerging policy and provide a public and doctor perspective on policy issues at an early stage of their development, though possibly also as part of the formal consultation process.

The Reference Community will consider issues from all areas of the organisation as operational and engagement plans are developed. Members of the Community will be invited to review policy documents and publications, and to take part in policy working groups on specific issues.

One of the first projects for the Community will be to look at the fitness to practise letters we send to doctors. We’ll also be asking both the public and doctor members of the Community for their ideas for new scenarios which could be included in GMP in Action and, later in the year, for feedback on our plans for promoting equality and diversity in medical regulation during 2010.

We also hope to be involving doctors from the Reference Community as we continue to develop and implement revalidation, and a further project will be seeking views on a redesign of GMCtoday.

GMC chair Peter Rubin said: ‘We want the Reference Community to work as flexibly as possible and we will draw on its membership in a variety of ways.’

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