Getting Involved in your College
Become a College Commentator
We respond to well over 100
consultation exercises each year and already involve several
hundred members in the process. We wish to involve as many
members as possible in this work.
We are asked to comment on clinical topics, practice issues,
regulatory matters, ethical and medico-legal issues and many areas
of public policy where they impact on GPs. We very much wish to
widen the field of those whom we invite to contribute because we
want to get as wide a range of views as possible. Equally, we wish
to ask members to be involved where they have the experience and
expertise to help and also can give some time to the process.
Inevitably, many members are very
busy and do not have the time to read what sometimes are very heavy
consultation documents and where the timetables to respond are
short. That is why widening the field of commentators will help –
it will spread the load so that we can still have a good range of
contributions on any subject.
We use the College's membership database where that shows
expressions of interest in areas of practice or clinical areas and
we endeavour to invite members with relevant interests to assist in
responding to documents. We ask members who serve on relevant
College Task Groups to participate. From time to time we choose
from the membership list at random as well as calling on our
experienced commentators.
You can check the special interest categories by emailing our
Membership Section on
membership@rcgp.org.uk who will
be able to send you a print out of the details we currently hold
about you. You can then update this if you wish to and tell us the
sorts of subjects you would be interested in commenting on. The
list of special interest categories is available here in
MSWord format or
PDF format and can be
printed out, and, either faxed to 020 7589 3145 or posted to
Corporate Affairs, The Royal College of General
Practitioners, 14 Princes Gate, London, SW7 1PU.
We use email and the Web wherever possible for comment as it is
swift and avoids copying costs. Often we will refer to web-based
consultation documents.
We credit contributions to our
comment responses by listing at the end the names of members who
have contributed. We do not however attribute individual comments
to contributors. It is also our practice to treat any of our
responses as being in the public domain - although in any instance
you can ask that your name is not recorded as a contributor or
explain why a certain view should not be in the public
domain.
Please remember, you may not be asked to comment on any topics you
are interested in for some time – so if you do want to be part of
this work, you may not hear from us for some months.
If you wish to take up this invitation, then please do so by email
with the following information:
- Your name
- Your email address for this purpose
- Your postal address for this purpose
- A daytime telephone contact number
We need the telephone and postal
details in case we need to contact you if the email contact proves
to be problematic at any time.
Please send your email to
corpaffairs@rcgp.org.uk.
This work is honorary –
unfortunately we are not able to meet any costs of member
involvement.