The Road to General Practice

A Starter's Guide for Trainees

While the posts and trainers may vary, one thing you'll all need to master will be the way we assess your competency towards being an independent general practitioner and obtaining membership to the Royal College of General Practitioners. To give an idea of a typical year in your final year in training and the frequency of the assessments to keep pace with, follow the link:

http://www.hhs-tmc.co.uk/about-the-practice/being-a-training-practice/roadmap/

Be aware there's a lot of abbreviations, the experienced trainees will know well, some of the new trainees will be baffled by. Here's the crash course:

WpbA Workplace-based Assessment.

This is the biggest part of how you are assessed, and it also drives your development. It's the collection of assessments, audits, professional conversations, significant events, courses and certificates, reflective learning log entries and Out of hours sessions you record in your RCGP eportfolio. Your experiences should stimulate ideas for your Personal Development Plan (PDP).

Your clinical supervisor and Educational Supervisor will comment on your entries throughout to help your development and use the evidence you provide when conducting end of post Clinical Supervisor Review (CSR) or Educational Supervisor Review (ESR). These reviews form the basis for assessment at the yearly ARCP panels, which determine your ability to proceed to the next year or get your Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT).

• COT Consultation Observation Tool

An assessment in general practice of your consultation skills using the Royal College criteria. The assessment should also stimulate your further learning with regards to a structured approach to patient centred consulting that you will need to demonstrate for your examination.

• CbD Case-based Discussion

An assessment of your professional judgement when reviewing the case with your supervisor in general practice under various competency headings. This examination is different to random case analysis which could examine what you might do in similar cases in future. The case based discussion examines what you have actually done in practice. Again the assessment is designed to stimulate your further development and you should leave the assessment with a clear idea of what is required to meet the standards of independent practice.

• Mini-CEX Mini Clinical Evaluation Exercise

The equivalent of the COT when in a secondary care placement.

• PSQ Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire

An annual exercise in general practice placements where we gain the opinions of the patients who have encounters with you. This is then compared with the ratings of your peers to give you balanced feedback on your progress from a patient's perspective.

• MSF Multi Source Feedback

Sometimes known as 360° feedback or Team Assessment of Behaviour. Colleagues within the multidisciplinary team give constructive feedback as to your clinical expertise and team working skills during their experience of working with you.

• DOPS Direct Observation of Procedural Skills

(For historical reference only) A collection of mandatory and optional clinical skills. The mandatory skills must be able to be 'performed unsupervised' by the end of your training. These have now being phased out so all trainees completing training after August 2015 will need to demonstrate evidence via CEPS...

• CEPS Clinical Examination & Procedural Skills

The new templates created by the college to show competence in, amongst others, the mandatory intimate examinations of prostate, breast, male genital, female genital and lastly rectal examination.

AKT Applied Knowledge Test.

An examination of your clinical knowledge, interpretation of evidence and awareness of organisation in general practice. You are allowed a maximum 4 attempts at this examination, which can be sat in your ST2 year when in a GP placement, although greater experience in a general practice setting will improve your appreciation of the business side of general practice that will be in the examination.

CSA Clinical Knowledge Assessment.

A 13-station assessment carried out at the Royal College examining your interpersonal skills, data gathering and clinical management. This was replaced during the pandemic by the Recorded Consultation Assessment (RCA)

You are allowed a maximum of 4 attempts at this examination, (which if needed would involve considerable expense), although evidence suggests your greatest chance of success is in your first attempt. We would encourage all trainees considering sitting their CSA/RCA to discuss this with their trainers to ensure they are adequately prepared.