Governance and Strategic Support / Forum

This Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEMCurriculum) is written by the Curriculum Sub-Committee. This Sub-Committee was established in 2017 as a standing body to work on the Curriculum and its Programme of Assessment. It meets quarterly and reports to the Education Committee. The committee is constituted of trainees, fellows, lay representatives and RCEM officers (the Dean and Deputy CEO). It has representatives from all devolved nations, an ACCS link, Training Standards Committee representative (Heads of School) and ordinary fellows appointed after open application. It includes fellows with special interest in human factors and clinical reasoning. The members of the Curriculum Sub-Committee are listed in appendix 1.

Excellence by Design

The General Medical Council’s (GMC) requirement for curriculum review, described in its 2017 report ‘Excellence by Design’, was published after the Committee was formed, although the changes were broadly anticipated. The Curriculum Sub-Committee developed an outline of the structure of a new curriculum that met the GMCs requirements and sought feedback on this with a national survey of RCEM members and fellows, a survey of patients and feedback from national and regional meetings.

This initial outline was iterated based on the responses returned and a ‘Purpose Statement’ sent to the GMC’s Curriculum Oversight Group (COG) for review. This step is necessary to evaluate suitability in all devolved nations and compatibility with the findings of the Shape of Training Review and is required before further development can continue. Approval for the Purpose Statement was given by the COG in January 2019.

In parallel, members of the Curriculum-Sub Committee have been working with the Acute Care Common Stem Training Intercollegiate Curriculum Development Board. Core training is ACCS for EM, but the ACCS curriculum also needs to meet the requirements of trainees in each of the four allied ACCS specialities.  A Purpose Statement for ACCS training, including Learning Outcomes, has also been submitted to the GMC’s COG. It was approved in June 2019.

Stakeholder review

A full working draft of the curriculum was available for stakeholder review. This included RCEM trainees and trainers, others working in EM, Royal Colleges, patient and lay groups, NHS employers among others. Feedback was triangulated and the curriculum iterated prior to full submission to the GMC for approval in February 2020.

The curriculum will be launched in AUGUST 2021 following a full programme of preparation and training.

This web-site offers the opportunity to leave comments at the end of each section. There are discussion forums to encourage discussion and a survey will follow for EM trainees and trainers.

An email address for comments is also available curriculum@rcem.ac.uk

Home Page Forums

Comments are closed