All committees within the structure of the College.
The committee is chaired by a Lay Chair and is responsible for assuring the administrative functions of the College, financial governance and responsible for HR issues within the College.
This Committee is concerned with setting standards in Emergency Medicine by examinations, eLearning, CPD and research.
The Committee is chaired by the Dean of the College.
Information about examinations can be found in the Exams section
Information about the EM Curriculum can be found in the Curriculum section
Information about Continuing Professional Development (CPD) can be found in the CPD section
Information about eLearning is available on RCEMLearning
Information about research is available in the Research section
The Global EM Committee was established in 2017 and is currently chaired by Dr Jason Long.
You can find out more about the committee’s work in the International Section
The International Education Sub-Committee was also formed in 2017 and is currently chaired by Dr Sundararaj Manou
The Lay Advisory Group was created in 2008 as part of the College’s new constitution, and it has been fully operational since February 2009. It exists to contribute a non-clinical perspective to College decision-making at every level.
The Lay Advisory Group (LAG) provides advice from a lay perspective on the standards of care and training in Emergency Medicine. The LAG is primarily a lay, not a patient representative group.
Unlike other Medical Colleges, the nature of emergency medicine means that RCEM does not represent patients with specific conditions. In light of this LAG acts as a critical friend to the College, offering strategic advice from a non-institutional perspective. However the College does champion the needs of patients’ safety in emergency medicine and from time to time LAG may provide or source the patient perspective on specific issues when required.
The LAG has an advisory role and reports to the Council, the Chair of the LAG sits on Council. The LAG remit covers the following:
To fulfil this remit the Chair of the Lay Group liaises with the President and Chief Executive of the College to determine how best to utilise the skills and experience of the lay members, having regard for their time available and budgetary constraints. This includes involvement in College projects and Committee work on an issue by issue basis, as well as sitting on College Committees.
The role of the lay representative is to combine being a supportive member of a decision making panel, providing independent guidance and constructive challenges to current ways of thinking. All lay members are invited to act as individuals rather than on behalf of outside organisations, but they are encouraged to feedback information to those organisations with which they have links. The LAG has 12 members including representation from devolved nations.
Please contact the committee via Tamara Pinedo: tamara.pinedo@rcem.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 7067 4819.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine is dedicated to achieving the highest standards of practice and patient care.
Co-Chairs Anna Buckley and Duncan Carmichael
This committee coordinates all activities aimed at developing, promoting and monitoring careers information for students and doctors in training grades on behalf of the College.
Further information and resources can be found here: Considering a career in EM
Chair – Dr Kirsty Challen
The Informatics Committee seeks to develop case-mix measures and high quality data collection and information technology systems for the specialty of Emergency Medicine.
Objectives
Information and resources about case-mix and IT can be found in the Informatics section on the Service Design & Delivery page.
For any enquiries please contact Sam.Mcintyre@rcem.ac.uk
Chair Gillian Bryce
This committee coordinates College policy on revalidation and provides guidance to members and fellows with regard to revalidation.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s role in revalidation, as with other medical royal colleges and faculties, is:
The College has established a Revalidation subcommittee of the Professional Standards Committee, under the direction of the Revalidation Chair Dr Gillian Bryce, to continue and complete specific work streams as well as develop a quality assurance framework for revalidation.
This committee will continue to develop several work streams including:
The subcommittee has Revalidation Advisers from each National/Regional area.
Chair – Ed Smith
This committee supports members and fellows involved in emergency department service design and configuration.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine is dedicated to achieving the highest standards of practice and patient care. Designing and delivering services is at the heart of delivering these standards. The Service Design & Configuration Committee works to support this.
Within these pages you can find:
For any enquiries about service design and delivery please contact Sam McIntyre: Sam.Mcintyre@rcem.ac.uk
The College has developed this important strategy to improve the working lives of clinicians working in Emergency Departments in the UK. The guidance documents are specifically aimed to help guide Clinical Directors of Emergency Medicine, clinicians, employers and commissioners of emergency healthcare.
We urge all working in Emergency Departments or responsible for emergency care systems to take the time to read the strategy. Then ensure that:
Our members’, and all healthcare professionals’, workplaces should be free from all forms of bullying and harassment. Our Sustainable Working Practice Committee along with other RCEM committees are developing work to tackle bullying in the workplace and in our view the working environment should allow healthcare professionals to work with dignity and respect, without the unacceptable threat of bullying and harassment. Bullying and harassment undermines physical and mental health and can lead to reduced performance and increased sickness absence.
Below are some useful resources from RCEM and other organisations that are there to support you.
RCEM
RSCed
GMC
BMA
Civility saves lives
National Guardian’s Office
Resources
Blogs & videos
Key messages
The ED Spa works on the principle of 5 elements of well-being:
More information on the principles of the ED Spa and how to create one in your own ED ware coming over the next few months. You can also follow or contact the ED Spa on twitter.
Great wellness organisations
Please contact these committees via email to Sam McIntyre
Address: The Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Octavia House, 54 Ayres Street, London, SE1 1EU.
The mental health and retention of frontline clinicians in emergency medicine are urgent areas of priority to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM). The Psychologically Informed Policy and Practice development project (PIPP) aims to understand and begin to address some of the key issues that underpin these pressing problems, starting by meeting with key stakeholders and planning for change.
The challenges of COVID-19 have shone a spotlight on an already stretched workforce. This has had a considerable psychological impact on staff and has resulted in many staff considering reduced hours, changing careers or retiring early (RCEM, 2021). Previous research, that investigated the experiences and needs of emergency medicine doctors, has established sources of distress in the workforce and derived an empirically grounded model of psychological care (Daniels et al. 2021) that encompasses some of the basic needs which are unmet and a source of distress and frustration for emergency medicine clinicians.
This project will involve a collaboration between University of Bath, UKRI fundings body and RCEM, and will be led by Dr Jo Daniels (j.daniels@bath.ac.uk), Senior Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist at the University of Bath, with research assistance from Milly Robinson. This project will be delivered as part of a secondment to RCEM, and during this time, we aim to work with clinicians from all professions and grades to gather and analyse data to inform the development of policy and a care pathway, including drawing on our own programme of research, and work done in collaboration with the TERN network (CERA) COVID-19 Emergency Responsiveness Assessment ⋆ TERN (ternresearch.co.uk)
Hear more about the research programme to date here, in a brief animation:
CoCCo Study – towards a model of psychological care in frontline doctors – YouTube
The Quality in Emergency Care Committee (QECC) is focussed on achieving a consistently high standard of care in all UK Emergency Departments, placing the specialty firmly at the centre of the current “quality agenda”. This will ensure that Emergency Departments continue to receive the resources they need, and are recognised for excellence in clinical care as well as time standards.
The committee aims to provide regular information and useful communications to Emergency Departments, supporting clinical quality and service improvement, providing guidance and administering relevant national audits.
Please note that until April 2014, the committee was named the Clinical Effectiveness Committee.
The work of the QECC is split between a number of subcommittees. Please clink on the sections below for more information.
+ Best Practice Sub-committeeChair – Dr James France
Objectives
To develop consensus based best practice statements for the speciality of Emergency Medicine
To advise the NHS, DOH, HCC, the Royal Colleges and other national bodies who have an interest in good clinical practice in Emergency Departments.
To develop and maintain the best practice section of the College website.
The subcommittee has produced many excellent best practice guidelines which can be downloaded from the College Guidance page.
The subcommittee also reviews and endorses guidelines from other organisations that are relevant to Emergency Medicine. See the External Guidance page.
Many Emergency Departments have shared locally developed guidelines to help exchange best practice. These can be viewed on the Local Guidance page.
Find out more.
Chair – Dr Emma Redfern.
The QEC Safer Care subcommittee has been established to identify key themes and markers for patient safety, and develop and disseminate patient safety and risk management strategies for the specialty of Emergency Medicine (EM). The subcommittee will ensure that the College considers the safety of patients in all aspects of its work at all levels; National, Regional and Departmental.
Regular safety alerts and newsflashes are produced and distributed to ED safety leads. If you have any queries about safety in the emergency department, you can reach the administrator and committee Chair by emailing safety@rcem.ac.uk
Chair – Dr Elizabeth Saunders.
The committee designs and runs three national clinical audits of emergency medicine practice each year, and maintains RCEM’s clinical standards.
Find out more about clinical audit, quality improvement and clinical standards.
Chair – Dr Ian Higginson.
RCEM undertakes reviews of emergency care services at the invitation of NHS organisations. A service review can help a failing ED to become good, and a good ED to become excellent.
Chair – Dr Catherine Hayhurst.
This subcommittee works to progress and promote emergency mental health care.
Chair – Dr Jon Jones.
To develop and promote consensus based best practice on major trauma.
Chair – Dr Johann Grundlingh.
To promote the latest evidence and develop consensus based best practice on toxicology.
Chair – Dr Ling Harrison.
RCEM has convened a new Special Interest Group looking at public health.
Chair – Dr Tara Sood.
RCEM has convened a new Special Interest Group looking at ambulatory emergency care.
Chair – Dr Rachel Morris-Smith
Contact on OPEMChair@rcem.ac.uk
RCEM has convened a new Special Interest Group looking at care for older people.
Find out more on our clinical guidelines page
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Click on the links below to access resources for clinicians and departments:
Click on the links below for the minutes, publicly available from July 2015:
Please contact the QECC administrator with any queries:
e-mail: Sam.McIntyre@rcem.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7067 1269