Fitness to Practice

Challenge

The General Medical Council (GMC) is a statutory body whose main role is the regulation of the medical profession in the United Kingdom. The GMC’s powers are provided by the Medical Act 1983 (as amended) and its main responsibilities may be described as follows:

  • Keeping up to date registers of qualified doctors
  • Fostering good medical practice
  • Promoting high standards of medical education
  • Dealing firmly and fairly with doctors whose fitness to practice is in doubt

They require the provision of highly skilled role players for 40-70 performance assessments per year and approximately 25 validation sessions. 

Requirements

  • Trained role players
  • Role players briefed and debriefed after the OSCE
  • Supply child actors and chaperones
  • Provide role players who are from a non UK culture or speak a foreign language
  • Develop and test scenarios used in the OSCE and simulated surgery

Solution

Professional Role Players have been working in the medical field for over 20 years. Our specialised medical role play team have a vast range of knowledge, allowing them to portray healthcare professionals, simulated patients and relatives with sincerity and accuracy. We provide role players who represent varying ages, genders and ethnicities.

All role players involved with working with the GMC have experience in OSCEs (Objective Structured Clinical Examination), which is a standard assessment tool used by medical and other healthcare professional schools, to assess a person’s clinical competence, including their applied knowledge, history taking & physical examination skills, communication skills, clinical reasoning and patient management.

We recruit and train the most experienced actors for our client benefit. A bespoke training programme has been designed for our role players working with the GMC to maintain standardisation.

Results

Over the last 4 years, PRP has run approximately 450 Fitness to Practice Performance Assessments for doctors of all specialities and validation Events for the GMC. The contract has now been extended for another 3 years.