Review Tuesday: RACP CPD information session

Today’s ‘Review Tuesday’. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians is a learned college responsible for training, educating and representing over 13,500 physicians and paediatricians in Australasia [1]. Including me. Effective last 1 January, it made its continuing professional development program [2] mandatory for all its Fellows [3]. Non participation means no RACP rights and privileges. And from last 1 July the Medical Board of Australia made participation in a CPD program a mandatory requirement for renewal of medical registration [4]. The College’s CPD online recording system’s called MyCPD [5]. Last night in Melbourne the College held a 2-hour information session on CPD and MyCPD – because Fellows’ 2010 data must be loaded into MyCPD by 31 March. With 70-80 of my colleague physicians, I attended. An elderly lot we were. Seemingly younger physicians are having little problem with mandatory CPD and MyCPD. But not so older physicians. They barely constrained themselves during the didactic presentation by the (non-medical) head of the College’s CPD Unit. Then came question time, which was a signal for a cathartic explosion of anger and frustration. Especially with the fact there’s no evidence mandatory CPD produces better and safer doctors. The chairwoman struggled to keep control of the session. Eventually she relented and closed it – 20 minutes early. I went home replete with two MyCPD points (towards the 100 I need for 2011). I learned nothing – except how angry and frustrated my colleagues are with mandatory CPD and MyCPD. Ho hum.

A monumentally shortsighted and stupid decision

On 21 June 2009 I wrote I was thinking of stopping work when I turn 65 [1]. Then my 65th birthday was three years off. Now it’s under half that. For as long as I can recall – at least from 1969 when I graduated – retired doctors in Victoria could obtain restricted registration by the Medical Board of Victoria, and restricted medical indemnity cover. This allowed them to write prescriptions and also referrals to specialists. In short, to provide limited medical services. But this arrangement, which allowed retired doctors to be useful and to retain a link with their profession, was anathema to the Medical Board of Australia which last 1 July took over from State Medical Boards, registration of doctors and regulation medical practice [2]. Its reason’s that doctors providing occasional medical services can’t do it safely. Or at least not as safely as doctors who provide the same services more frequently. Yet the Board can’t provide a shred of evidence to justify its decision. The decision’s the antithesis of inclusive and the embodiment of dismissive, and it’ll load more work onto already overworked non-retired doctors. Not unexpectedly, this decision has irked, and continues to irk, doctors who’ve retired since l July, and those who’ll retired soon [3]. It’s a monumentally shortsighted and stupid decision. I doubt it’ll be reversed. But you never know. If it’s not, I hope those myopic bureaucrats who’re responsible for it, come to regret it. Will they? Don’t answer that – it’s a rhetorical question.