Welcome to the GOC Consultation Hub

We asked the Open Canvas audience to provide feedback on Task 1 as conducted by the Expert Advisory Group (EAG).

The general feedback was that Knowledge, Skills and Behaviour applied to all categories, the EAG also agreed with this.

Under the following categories and elements, the Open Canvas feedback suggested:

• Communication category: Under this category there should be an additional element called ‘Personal Appraisal’
• Multi-disciplinary teamworking category: There should be an element added in this category called ‘Awareness of professional boundaries’
• Clinical Excellence category: In this category the element ‘Research’ should read as ‘Conduct and critically evaluate research’, the element ‘Learning from near misses’ should be changed as it is difficult to define what a near miss is.

We presented the feedback from Task 1 to the EAG, they then decided whether to accept, reject or incorporate the feedback from Open Canvas into the next stage. The group agreed the following:

• Communication category: The term ‘Personal appraisal’ is associated with business and strays into employment the EAG felt this was ambiguous in meaning. Furthermore the EAG decided that ‘Personal Appraisal’ can be reflected under the element ‘self-reflection’
• Multi-disciplinary teamworking category: The EAG felt the addition of ‘Awareness of professional boundaries’ as an element is not needed at this stage and will come under referral and signposting and can be reflected in the Ethics and Standards category.
• Clinical Excellence category: The EAG felt that ‘Conduct and critically evaluate’ was going into a more granular level and will be explored later. The EAG agreed that the term ‘near-misses’ was not seen as appropriate and instead felt that NHS Governance terminology such as ‘Impact prevented’ was more suitable.

We continue to invite you to relay to your stakeholders that the ESR Open Canvas is a platform open to the thoughts of all interested parties as we continue to develop the ESR.

We asked the Open Canvas audience to provide feedback on the first task as conducted by the Expert Advisory Group (EAG). 

The general feedback was that Knowledge, Skills and Behaviour applied to all categories, the EAG also agreed with this.

Under the following categories and elements, the Open Canvas feedback suggested:

• Communication category: Under Communication the elements ‘Attitude' and 'Demeanour’ should read as ‘Professional Conduct’. ‘Breaking Bad News’ and ‘Managing Patient Expectations’ should read as ‘Explaining and Advising’
• Supporting Others to Develop category: Under this category it was felt by a respondent that the element ‘Teaching’ should read as ‘Teaching and Assessing’
• ‘Lifelong Learning’ category could incorporate ‘Supporting Others to Develop’
• Clinical Excellence category should be merged with Clinical Management category
• A respondent disagreed with the element ‘Entrepreneurship' sitting under Clinical Excellence and felt the name of this element was unsuitable
• Disagreement with the element ‘Multimodal’ which sits under the Communication category.

We presented the feedback from Open Canvas for Task 1 to the EAG they then decided whether to accept, reject or incorporate the feedback from Open Canvas into the next stage. The EAG feedback can be seen below:

• Communication category - Under Communication the group decided that:
  • ‘Professional Conduct’ is a more suitable term than ‘Attitude and Demeanour’.
  • ‘Breaking bad news’ and ‘Managing patient expectations’ should fall under an element called ‘Advising the patient’.
• Supporting Others to Develop category: Under this category the group decided that the element ‘Teaching’ should be ‘Teaching and Contribution to Assessing’
• The EAG felt that the Lifelong Learning category should be kept as is and should not be merged with Supporting Others to Develop
• The EAG felt that the ‘Clinical Excellence’ category and the ‘Clinical Management’ category should not be merged.
• The element ‘Entrepreneurship’ (under Clinical Excellence) should read as ‘Innovation’ instead and the EAG decided against the use of ‘Multimodal’ as an element under the Communication category.  

We continue to invite you to relay to your stakeholders that the ESR Open Canvas is a platform open to the thoughts of all interested parties as we continue to develop the ESR.

Thank you for responding to our consultation Fit for the Future: Lifelong learning Review. We asked stakeholders for their views on proposed changes to our CET scheme. Our current CET scheme was introduced in 2013, but the optical sector has changed since then and the work optometrists and dispensing opticians carry out has expanded and diversified. We want to make sure that our CET scheme continues to support our registrants’ learning and development needs, and continues to maintain the safety and quality of care patients receive.

We received 994 responses from a range of stakeholders and we welcome this feedback. In relation to one specific proposal, we took into account stakeholder views and concerns on our plan to implement a transition CET year in 2019 and a new scheme starting in 2020. The consultation highlighted concerns about this timeframe for change, and having carefully considered this we decided to revert to our usual three year CET cycle (starting in 2019), with the aim of introducing more significant change to the scheme in 2022. 

We will continue to use all the feedback we received to help inform our policy thinking in this area and help ensure that our CET scheme continues to evolve to meet the challenges of the future. Moving forwards, we will also continue to listen and engage with stakeholders to help develop our policies.