Health and Social Care Policy and the Interprofessional ... - CAIPE

adopted verbatim by each Regulatory Body. The GMC recommends that
team leaders, in this instance doctors, must amongst a number of other
directives, ‘communicate effectively with colleagues within and outside the
team’
A seminal document was published by the GMC in 2003. In ‘Tomorrow’s
Doctors’ it is made clear in Para 28f, that graduates ‘must be aware of current
developments and guiding principles in the NHS, for example [of] the
importance of working as a team within a multi-professional environment’. A
subsequent paragraph urges medical schools to ‘provide opportunities for
students to work and learn with other health and social care professionals.
This will help students understand the importance of teamwork in providing
care’ (GMC, 2003: Para 47).
Earlier this year the GMC Education Committee released a position statement
which notes that ‘the study of medicine also involves substantial direct and
intimate contact with patients making serious demands of students together
with the need to work collaboratively together with a range of health care
professionals and others’ (GMC, 2006a: Para 7). The Committee returned to
the theme in Para 8a with its reference to ‘one of the skills that is fundamental
to the skills of clinical medicine is described as: ‘the ability to communicate
clearly, sensitively and effectively with patients… and with colleagues from
health and a range of other professions who may be involved in the patients
care’ (GMC, 2006a: 2).
Published by the GMC and the PMETB the current consultation document
‘Quality Assurance of the Foundation Programme’ when referring to the
quality assurance process envisages that the ‘Team of Visitors’ whose remit is
to quality assure undergraduate medical training, will include not only doctors
but ‘other health professionals, lay members and patients’ (GMC, 2006b: Para
32b).
The selection criteria for appointment as a Visitor for the Quality Assurance of
the Framework Programme (QAFP) includes ‘a knowledge and understanding
of assessment systems and of developing and delivering interprofessional
learning’ (GMC, 2006b: 56).
GMC guidance on continuing professional development also makes it clear
that a doctor is expected, amongst other things, to ‘explore the benefits of
learning across professional disciplines and boundaries’ (GMC 2004: Para
19b). There is also the expectation that organisations (unspecified) will
provide guidance on topics such as ‘how to benefit from the knowledge and
experience of colleagues within a specialty, from other disciplines, professions
and agencies, and from patients’ (ibid: Para 27e) which is reinforced further in
Annex A of the document which states that good medical practice includes
‘shared learning across professional boundaries’ (ibid: Para 2d). It also
devotes a short and succinct section to working with colleagues in which it
states that doctors must keep up to date with: The roles and expertise of other
health and social-care professionals and effective team-working, management
and, if necessary, leadership skills…’ (ibid: Annex A Para 4).
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