DrHippocrates

Introduction I believe that the Tooke review of Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) offers the medical profession a unique opportunity to reshape, for the better, the training of Juniors Doctors. A pause in the implementation of MMC has been enforced by the reactions to the serious problems that arose during the implementation of the specialty selection process (SSP), which involved the use of the Medical Training Application System (MTAS) software. I have been involved in Postgraduate Medical Education and the training of Junior Doctor as a Director of Medical Education since 2001, and have witness the conception, birth and growing pains of MMC. I have seen much that is good and much that was poor in the way MMC was introduced and developed, and commended the good and criticised the poor. I want to write a paper to make a personal contribution to the shaping of the future of MMC. I hope to make this easy to read and navigate. I have placed a table of contents at the head of the document...

Competencies and Competences The Gold Guide for Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) and the Foundation Curriculum and assessments are strewn with the word “Competences”. I have struggled to find a definition for “Competences” and concluded that it was a neologism, or an American equivalent of “Competencies”. I now have an answer! I have been reading “Competency Based Recruitment and Selection” by Robert Wood and Tim Payne (ISBN 0-471-97473-0, John Wiley, 1998). Competencies were first described in detail by Boyatzis and are to do with “an underlying characteristic of a person which results in an effective and or superior performance in a job”. He described 21 competencies, each with three levels Motive and trait Self image and social role Skill Thus someone with competency in efficiency is motivated by a need for high achievement “I want our hospital to do loads of operations with few complications”, has a self image of “I am efficient” or “I can do better” and a social role of a team mo...