Supporting Surgeons in the Workplace

A major strategic priority for the College is to support surgeons in the workplace to implement and maintain professional standards of patient care.

The College is committed to implementing a regional professional affairs infrastructure that provide:

• a strong, unified local and national voice for surgery in relation to service provision and professional matters,
• effective professional leadership for local surgeons through the Professional Affairs Boards headed up by the College Director for Professional Affairs, and
• support for surgeons in difficulty, and with job planning, career development and revalidation processes and requirements through the Regional Specialty Professional Advisors (RSPAs), College ratified representatives of the nine SAC-defined specialty associations.

Following the success of the first two Supporting Surgeons in the Workplace pilots in the West Midlands and South West in 2007-08 the College endorsed the DPA role and extended it to a further five regions in 2009. Directors for Professional Affairs and Professional Affairs Boards are now in place in nine out of ten SHA regions in England, and in Wales. It is envisaged that the last two remaining regions, North East and Northern Ireland, will come on online by the beginning of 2011. The RSPA role is still being piloted and all Specialty Associations are in the process of appointing a full complement of Regional Specialty Professional Advisors across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The key features of regional implementation are partnership working with the Specialty Associations and local NHS, mapping of roles and structures to SHA boundaries and to the devolved administrations of Wales and Northern Ireland, and flexibility in implementation to best meet local requirements.

Professional Affairs Boards are delivering College and Specialty Association aims and support for the local NHS through collaborative commissioning, clinical safety and improvement initiatives, and guidance on job planning and career development.

Directors for Professional Affairs work closely with the College's Regional Council Members and Regional Coordinators and meet four times a year in the College's Directors for Professional Affairs Forum. The Forum is a designated key Council Committee, reporting directly to Council via the President. It is the mechanism through which best practice is shared and through which central College policy is developed from the regions and fed back into local NHS processes. A national picture can be built up from the regional landscape enabling the College to make appropriate and timely recommendations to the Department of Health on professional matters.

For a list of DPAs and RSPAs in each region please go to Professional Affairs network.