Abstract
The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) are currently entering another round of recruiting for ‘Clinical Champions’ for the period of 2011–13. The chosen clinical priorities are Social Exclusion, Chronic Pain, Domestic Violence and Nutrition for Health. The programmes of work and activity will be governed by the RCGP Clinical Innovation and Research Centre (CIRC).
Clinical Champions, who should be College members, will be expected to lead on a range of work that highlights the relevant priority area widely to primary care. Of particular importance will be the need to engage with and draw on the experience of agencies, organizations and academic centres that have developed an interest in that area and can help our Clinical Champions develop a programme of useful and practical work that can directly improve patient care.
The Clinical Champion programme to date has generated excellent work such as the End of Life Strategy led by Professor Keri Thomas, the Child Health Strategy led by Dr Anthony Harnden and the Out of Hours Toolkit led by Dr Agnelo Fernandes. Many of our Clinical Champions also have the opportunity to engage with the Department of Health (DH). Dr Matt Hoghton, for example, has worked with the DH to produce guidance for GPs on delivering annual health checks that has been distributed nationally.
The CIRC is chaired by Professor Helen Lester, with Sophia Woroch as its Head and Dr Imran Rafi as its Medical Director. Its remit is to improve clinical standards for the care of patients through clinical effectiveness, quality improvement and research initiatives linked to GP education, training and continuing professional development.
CIRC works with many partner organizations including other professional colleges such as the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. Its flagships include the Scientific Foundation Board that helps to support fledgling researchers with awards up to the value of £20k. The RCGP Research and Surveillance Centre has an excellent reputation and the Research Ready Programme supports practices to develop a research governance framework that prepares practices for Primary Care Network research.
More recent initiatives include the setting up of the Kuenssberg Awards (five awards each to the value of £1k) for excellent audit work and the Peer Review Audit Scheme that will provide peer-reviewed feedback on audit projects.
For further information on these initiatives, please do visit the CIRC website (www.rcgp.org.uk/circ).