Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care

Annual General Meeting

Report 2015

Contents

Chairman’s Report .................................................................................................................................. 3

Honorary Secretary’s Report .................................................................................................................. 7

Treasurer’s Report .................................................................................................................................. 8

Faculty Manager’s Report ....................................................................................................................... 9

Committee & Group Reports ............................................................................................................... 11

Training and Standards Committee................................................................................................... 11

Clinical Standards Committee ........................................................................................................... 12

Communication Committee .............................................................................................................. 12

Regional Chairs Group ....................................................................................................................... 13

Nurse and Paramedic Group ............................................................................................................. 14

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Chairman’s Report

Strategic Development As stated in previous annual reports a lot of work has gone on in recent years to strategically develop the faculty in order that it has an infrastructure which will support in sustainable development in the future. To achieve this it has been necessary to develop both our administration and professional infrastructure. I'm delighted to announce that Laura Vermeulen was appointed as the Faculty Manager and took up post on 1 January 2015. Many of you will have seen evidence of the work that Laura has undertaken since her appointment. Of particular note is the creation of a digital strategy to develop a range of platforms to support the work of

the Faculty, this includes a Faculty presence across the four main social media platforms Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ plus the creation of a comprehensive new website, which at launch was packed with over 80 pages of content. The website is responsive and cross-platform compatible so is mobile friendly and works across a range of devices. Work is ongoing to develop the website further and Laura has been working closely with the web team to develop the back end infrastructure to create a range of integrated online application and payment systems to provide a more user-friendly customer experience. It is hoped these will be ready for launch in early 2016. Staffing Changes As well as the appointment of a new Manager, other staffing changes have taken place. Lindsay Millar who has provided invaluable help and support to faculty and Members alike over many years - will now be taking on the new role of Co-ordinating the Faculty’s new postgraduate programmes. Maggie Lynch, our part-time Office Administrator left for pastures new in January. With so many new developments and an increasing workload we appointed a temporary Office Administrator, Martina Joechle, for six months from July.

From September the Faculty welcomed two new members of staff, Alice Breton in a new role of Education Lead and Research Development Support Co-ordinator and Juliana Fraser, e-Learning Administrator. Both Alice and Juliana’s roles are moving from the Education department to the Faculty along with the DipROM programme. I hope that the benefits of these changes will be apparent to the whole membership.

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Regarding the professional infrastructure development this is now complete and the structure of the faculty is now outlined in the diagram below. This is a dramatic change over the past few years and in particular in the past 12 months and is worth some explanation:

Established structures such as the Examinations and the Training and Standard’s committees have been retained.

New committees for Clinical Standards and Communications have been formed and were referred to in my previous Annual Report.

A regional faculty infrastructure continues to be developed and it was felt necessary to have this recognised within the Faculty structure hence the Regional Faculty Chair’s Group.

To ensure the multi-professional development of the faculty is reflected in The Faculty infrastructure it was felt that three new groups should be formed to represent the Nursing and Paramedic professions as well as Students and Junior Doctors. Andrew Thurgood is chairing the Nurse Group and Andy Thomas is chairing the Paramedic Group. I know these groups will have significant developments to report in the near future.

The previous journal was inadequate for the needs of The Faculty. To ensure this problem is addressed a Publications Group has been formed.

In the last year The Faculty has taken over responsibility for two educational postgraduate diploma programmes. These developments are outlined below:

The Diploma in Remote and Offshore Medicine (DipROM) This diploma has been run successfully from within the College since 2008. Due to restructuring within the College’s Education Department it was necessary to find a new home for this educational programme. The College felt that the programme could be best supported within The Faculty of Pre-hospital Care. The Faculty Executive agreed that this was an appropriate location for this programme and hence from September 2015 responsibility for the DipROM has now been accepted by the Faculty. Details at: http://fphc.rcsed.ac.uk/education-resources/remote-offshore-medicine

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The Diploma in Mountain Medicine This educational programme has been run for the past 10 years by The University of Leicester, the UIAA (Union Internationale Des Associations D’Alpinisme)/IKAR (International Commission of Alpine Rescue) and ISMM (International Society of Mountain Medicine.) The University of Leicester have decided that this educational programme does not fit with the overall strategic development. The other organisations involved were anxious to have a new academic partner for this programme and after negotiations and extensive work by Laura Vermeulen, our new Faculty Manager, it was agreed to take over this academic programme. I am grateful to Jeurgen Klein for taking the professional lead in this on behalf of the Faculty. Details of this can be found on The Faculty website at: http://fphc.rcsed.ac.uk/education-resources/mountain-medicine Clinical Standards Committee This committee was formed to take forward work on The Faculty’s clinical publications including the Core and D13 Manuals, Consensus statements and advising other organisations clinically, when requested to so. Lorraine Greasley has been appointed as Chair and has developed a programme of work including proposals for regular review of The Manual of Core Material and the development of four consensus statements per year. Communications Committee Alistair Steel has been appointed to Chair this committee and is working closely with the Faculty Manager to ensure we develop the website and all other communications strategies to meet our developing needs. The Committee are working on developing a range of digital resources including a number of videos to help exam candidates. They have also commissioned photos for marketing and web use and will have a proactive role in providing rich content for both the website and social media. The Training and Standards Committee This is now chaired by John Ferris. A programme of course reviews, stated by the previous chair, Professor Ian Greaves, is now running well and John and the Faculty office staff are looking on the digitalisation of all documentation required for course approval and review. This will streamline and reduce the workload for all involved in this essential area of Faculty activity. General Practice and sub-speciality status I have previously mentioned that in developing the new sub-speciality it was identified The Medical Act does not allow General Practitioners to become sub-specialists. Having agreed with The Royal College of General Practitioners Council that both organisations would work together to try to achieve changes to The Medical Act to allow General Practitioners to become sub-specialists it has become clear that this will prove difficult. This has also been discussed at the Intercollegiate Board for Training in Pre-hospital Emergency Medicine (IBTPHEM) and other avenues are being actively explored.

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Gibson Chair in Pre-hospital Care The College has now approved this position and I am delighted to say that this will be a multi-professional appointment. We have College approval to appoint from either the Paramedic, Nursing or Medical professions. We hope to make our first appointment in the next calendar year. I am sure that this appointment will further increase the academic reputation of pre-hospital care and The Faculty. PHEM guidance The Faculty hosted a series of three meetings with the purpose of developing a series of levels to allow a greater understanding of the capabilities of various pre-hospital care providers arriving at an incident. It has to be stressed that these levels have been designed specifically for the purpose of facilitating good inter-agency working on scene and are not related to educational attainment or Skills for Health Levels. This work is now completed and on our website. Journal Last year I reported that discussions were ongoing with BMJ publications to improve the far from satisfactory situation regarding the Pre-hospital care section in The EMJ. These discussions have not led to any improvements and we are therefore looking at an alternative solution. This is likely to be a new journal produced in conjunction with partner organisations. Work on this is being led by Professor David Lockey who is one of the Co-Vice-Chairs of The Faculty. Stevenson Group You may recall that this group was formed to identify and encourage individuals interested in contributing to Faculty development. It is hoped that this group will meet on a twice yearly basis and look at areas where input from group members would be of benefit. Lead College The Intercollegiate Board for Training in Pre-Hospital Emergency Medicine (IBTPHEM) was required by the GMC to have a lead college for it to communicate with. I am pleased to report that The Faculty with support of The College will take on this role and the administration for this will be handled by The College and The Faculty. Colville Laird Chairman of the Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care

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Honorary Secretary’s Report

The Faculty has had a very busy and productive year building on past activity and looking forward and planning strategically. Constitution This has been substantially rewritten and has been sent out to the membership for comment. Two minor changes have been made following this. During discussions with the College it was felt that we needed to align some aspects more to changes that have occurred with College systems and this has not proved possible to achieve before this meeting so that the membership can see what is proposed. The Chairman

and I are working with senior College officers to resolve this issue by the end of the year in the hope that we can recirculate the document in early January and hopefully adopt it at an EGM which is likely to be held in exam week in Edinburgh at the end of January. Membership Work is ongoing to undertake a major data cleansing exercise of The Faculty’s Membership database to provide accurate data regarding our Members and Fellows. Once the exercise is complete we will be able to prepare more detailed membership reports and be able to determine membership trends. Current membership numbers stand at 652 Members and Fellows in good standing. The PHEM competency framework is becoming more widely used as a benchmarking tool. The Chairman and Hon Secretary have both spoken to this topic at National conferences over the last six months. We have been exploring expedition medicine competencies with an expert panel and have produced an advisory document which will soon be published. The Student & Junior Doctor Group has become very much more established. It is now tied into our regional structure and linked in with Basics Junior to form a stable platform for local developments supported by the senior faculty officers. It is hoped to run a pilot scheme next year with London Ambulance Service (LAS) in which junior doctors are mentored by paramedics through a structured 2-4 year programme. If this is successful we hope it can be used as a generic template for similar schemes in other areas. After much angst last year, we launched our new website this year on 5 August. All pages are now public facing so information and resources are much more readily accessible as there is no need to log in to view them. The responsive design now offers a much more user friendly interface. The website will continue to develop and improve as new initiatives are launched and new functionality is introduced. As Colville has alluded to we have taken on many major pieces of work this year – Mountain Medicine, Remote & Offshore Medicine, IPTPHEM Lead College and a number of smaller but no less important endeavours – all on top of the not inconsiderable ‘routine’ work we also do. The committee structure has expanded to manage this workload but that in itself puts an extra administrative load onto the office. This has put strain on all of us and has necessitated prioritising workload according to a mixture

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of urgency and importance. This has meant that some things have taken longer than we would have liked but we are now beginning to catch up with where we need to be. You will see that Laura has produced an excellent briefing paper and mind map of current and imminent Faculty Office activity and I am happy to take questions on it if you wish. The Step 1 & 2 processes for level 8 accreditation became ‘live’ on 1 August and we have added the first level 8 practitioner to the Faculty Accredited Register – Dr Mark Byers. Exemption from the FIMC at step 1 remains an option until July 2017. I will be expanding on the regulations in a session at the conference. The next twelve months are likely to be just as busy - the development of an Urgent Care Diploma exam, working with several major organisations on rewriting their standard medical texts and looking at developing new materials to help underpin the delivery of the best quality pre-hospital care at all levels of responder. This is an exciting time to be involved in pre-hospital care! John Hall Honorary Secretary of the Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care

Treasurer’s Report

I am pleased to report that the current position and future projections for The Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care’s finances are good. The projected full year financial forecast is again positive with a projected balance of £18,889 from a total income of £244,655 and a total expenditure of £225,766.

Membership fees will remain unaltered for the 2016 financial year.

As in previous years our main source of income comes from the endorsement of courses and

the associated fees; accounting for approximately 50% of The Faculty’s income. Again we

anticipate this to remain the case.

Sales of both the Generic Core Manual and the revised Police Officers in Specialist Role Manual

continue to do well and so far this financial year have raised £15,500 in income. There was a

small cost of £9K associated with preparing the Core Generic Manual for e-publication, plus

some further minor editorial work on the Core Generic Manual and the Police Officers in

Specialist Role Manual.

The expected net income from the DipROM and DipMM programmes for the period

September to December is approximately £12K. The Hon Chairman and Hon Secretary’s report

give further detail on these two new exiting developments.

All other recurring expenditure has remained within expected parameters.

The accounts for the remainder of this financial year are in good order. At the current time there are no cost pressures / burdens that would cause a worry for the remainder of 2015, or for the forthcoming 2016 fiscal year. David Whitmore

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Honorary Treasurer of the Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care

Faculty Manager’s Report

Since taking up the post of Faculty Manager on 1 January it is fair to say that there has been a whirlwind of activity and new initiatives that show no signs of abating! Faculty Team In January the team consisted of myself, Lindsay Millar and Maggie Lynch. Maggie moved on to pastures new on 22 January and Lindsay and I worked steadfastly to hold the fort without her. It soon became apparent that with new work streams and initiative’s that the workload was simply too much for two people to manage. We recruited a temp, Martina Joechle, to help with the administration. Martina joined the team on 1 July on a six month temporary contract. From 1 September two new staff members joined the team as part of the transition of the Diploma in Remote and Offshore Medicine Programme (DipROM) from the Education Department to the Faculty. Alice Breton took up the new role of Education Lead and Research Development Support Co-ordinator and Juliana Fraser transferred over as the DipROM e-Learning Administrator. Faculty Aims The Faculty’s aims of promoting high standards of pre-hospital care through education research and teaching has resulted in a restructuring of The Faculty’s committee structure to support these aims. FPHC Office Workload The combination of the expanded committee and group structure and the development of new programmes, exams and Faculty initiatives has resulted an unprecedented growth in workload for The Faculty admin team. The diagram overleaf shows just how many new initiatives were introduced in 2015. As a result of this growth in work we are planning to restructure The Faculty and divide this work into three roles and to recruit staff to complete the team (these proposals are currently with the College’s senior management team for approval). I have also allowed for two new work streams to be introduced in 2016 - marketing and membership engagement. I am really keen to improve our Membership offering to Members and Fellows of the Faculty. As part of this I hope to send out a Membership Survey early next year to get your views on what Membership benefits matter to you. I very much hope you will take time to complete the survey when the time comes, so that you can have your say.

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Digital Strategy One of the first priorities I was given when taking up the post was the development of a digital strategy to make The Faculty’s digital platforms and infrastructure user friendly and fit for purpose. Since January we have expanded our social media platforms from one to eight! Four FPHC platforms plus four DipROM ones that came with the programme transfer. You can view them at the links below:

FPHC Social Media Accounts DipROM Social Media Accounts

Facebook Facebook Page

Twitter Facebook Group

LinkedIn Twitter

Google+ LinkedIn

The main priority I was given was the development of a new Faculty website. This took longer that I had hoped but we finally managed to launch this on 5 August. http://fphc.rcsed.ac.uk. All content on the new website is public facing so there is no longer a requirement to log in to see Faculty resources. With 85+ pages at launch the new website is packed full of news, information and resources to support Members and Fellows and those with an interest in pre-hospital care. Work is ongoing to add new pages and resources and multi-media. The newly formed Communication Committee has developed a range of video and podcast resources to help exam candidates prepare for their exams. These will be advertised across our social media platforms and published on the website over the coming months.

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The next phase of the digital strategy is sorting out The Faculty’s infrastructure. I am currently developing the technical specifications for online application and payment systems for the membership and course endorsement processes. It is hoped that these will be implemented in the first half of 2016. This will provide an enhanced user experience from the perspective of Members, Fellows and course providers as well as automating and streamlining some of the administrative tasks. Laura Vermeulen Faculty Manager of the Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care

Committee & Group Reports

Training and Standards Committee

I am pleased to report on the progress of our committee since I took office in February 2015. I would like to thank and recognise the work of my colleague and previous Chair - Professor Ian Greaves. The Faculty of Pre-hospital Care Training and Standards Committee continues to provide robust and professional educational oversight to in-excess of 50 National pre-hospital care courses. They range from equestrian, expedition and dive medicine through to tactical police medical support and first person on scene courses. The committee has expanded its collective experience with new appointments from dedicated academic educationalists through to experienced pre-hospital

and retrieval consultants. The ongoing demand for FPHC endorsement and recognition for educational content from pre-hospital organisations all over the UK affirms our unique position as an organisation capable of delivering an efficient and effective educational and academic benchmark in pre-hospital care. We are in the process of endorsing another four new courses at this present time with interest increasing month-by-month. The committee has a broad multi-professional base with paramedical, nursing and medical backgrounds all strongly represented over a group of 16 clinicians. Our current focussed work-streams involve a major overhaul of the database and communication system required to undertake the endorsement and reaccreditation assessments. We envisage that this system will become a fully integrated digital platform early next year to enable interested companies or organisations to share information and educational content with us rapidly and securely. Dr John Ferris Chair - Training and Standards

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Clinical Standards Committee

As a newly appointed committee, bringing together several existing work streams and formulating a structured framework, the Clinical Standards Committee has been challenged! Responsible for The Faculty’s clinical manuals, the committee has worked hard to create and maintain electronic versions of all publications and developed a feasible programme to ensure both electronic and hard copies are regularly updated. There have been opportunities to assist with First Person on Scene and Fire Service Medical Manuals.

Consensus statements continue to be developed with regular consensus days covering a range of topics. Work is ongoing to update existing statements and create new ones in line with requirements. Focus has been applied to data management and further standardisation, to have consistency across all statements. The statements continue to be held in high esteem and all consensus days supported by The Faculty have had a good attendance. It is likely that four new statements will be produced annually. Clinical questions continue to be asked of The Faculty and these are dealt with within this committee. Clinical Standards crosses all areas of The Faculty’s work, as well as the committees and groups that support it, we work closely with and are supported well by all. We look forward to the continued challenges ahead. Lorraine Greasley Chair – Clinical Standards Committee

Communication Committee

The newly formed Communication Committee have been hard at work behind the scenes creating a variety of rich digital resources to promote the work of the Faculty and to provide a range of training resources. This includes commissioning a number of short videos and podcasts to help exam candidates navigate through the DIMC and FIMC exams. We have also commissioned photos for the web and marketing purposes, these will be published shortly. The Committee is currently scoping social media management programmes to improve the Faculty’s social media presence across our four social media platforms. Alistair Steele Chair – Communication Committee

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Regional Chairs Group

In the past year The Faculty’s Regional network has increased its geographical footprint. This can be evidenced on the regional pages of the new Faculty website: http://fphc.rcsed.ac.uk/regions In recent months I have been to visit both the North West and South East regions and have established contacts in the North East, London and Wales. There are now two Welsh regions North and South to better support the large geographical area. South Central region remains a challenge.

We are fortunate to have many well established programmes running across the regional network, for example East Midlands now have a number of fledgling schemes. Other than relying very much on our volunteers to embrace multidisciplinary education, there are no hard and fast rules that dictate the structure or function of the regional groups. Whilst much has been achieved it is now timely to consolidate programmes, promote inter-regional collaboration and encourage regional leaders to consider joining our national executive. Professor Sir Keith Porter Chair – Regional Chairs Group

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Nurse and Paramedic Groups

As a group, we are delighted to see that the Fellowship in Immediate Medical Care (FIMC) is in the process of going before council for final approval to open this up to non-doctors. This is exciting for those of us who are clinically active in prehospital care [at level 7] importantly, it is inspirational for those non-doctors who aspire to sub-specialise in pre-hospital emergency medicine (PHEM) in the future. The possible opening up of the FIMC by College Council will be the formal recognition of the valuable contribution that trained and skilled immediate care practitioners continue to make in the pre-hospital arena and a decision will be greatly appreciated. We would like to thank the senior officers of the FPHC for supporting this important development.

The Faculty's pre-hospital nursing group has worked collaboratively with our paramedic colleagues in developing access to the pre-hospital emergency medicine training curriculum for non-doctors. During the initial stakeholder meeting in Edinburgh, which included the College of Paramedics, the principle of multi-disciplinary access to the curriculum was embraced by all present. As a group, we were delighted to hear of Dan Cody’s ground-breaking work in the East of England where they are planning to enter non-doctors into the pre-hospital emergency medicine training curriculum. There is more work to be done in working collaboratively with the Royal College of Nursing's Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACP) pathway team to explore cross referencing the ACP curricula along with PHEM curricula. Andrew Thurgood Chair – Nurse Group and on behalf of Andy Thomas Chair – Paramedic Group