The Executive Committee has unanimously agreed to endorse the Education Committee’s proposal that specialist clinics be made optional with immediate effect.
The reason for the change is that registrar feedback is that they are difficult to organise and learning is limited. The Education Committee advise that the core skills lists cover many of the items that would have been otherwise learned during the specialist clinic attendance. The training programme pages have been updated and the specialist clinics page removed.
After further discussion, it has been agreed that those current registrars who completed some or all specialist clinics are able to claim CME hours. You may claim up to 1 point per hour up to a maximum of 6 points in any one day. You may claim up to 30 pts for the current triennium.
Ongoing, any attendance at specialist clinics (now optional) can be claimed in a similar fashion as CME.
We recognise that this is a change to a long-established training requirement but the College feels that the new core skills can cover the learning objectives that were the purpose of the specialist clinics originally. Ongoing we would encourage registrars to spend time at urgent care clinic fracture clinics or soft clinics and to supplement their learning with specialist clinics in the DHB or in private to meet the core skills list need and we would be happy to offer a letter of support for this as was done previously.