The Joint Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine of Ireland facilitates the professional competence schemes (PCS) for fellows and trainees in intensive care medicine in Ireland. It is a legal requirement to maintain your professional competence requirements if you hold general, supervised or specialist registration with the Medical Council. Registered doctors in retirement need to maintain the same PCS records as their practising colleagues.
Requirements: The requirements for maintaining satisfactory professional competence are set out by the Medical Council and a full summary of the guidelines for doctors can be viewed on their site here.
In summary, a total of 50 PCS points need to be recorded in a training year, from May 1st to April 30th. These points are divided between 5 domains; external activities, internal activities, personal learning, research or teaching, and clinical audit. In general, 1 hour of activity earns 1 PCS point and 1 clinical audit equals 12 hours of PCS activity. Faculty trainees and fellows are required to record their PCS activities in an online fashion. On satisfactory completion of each annual PC scheme, each registrant will receive an Annual Statement of Participation from the Faculty. Doctors are strongly advised to keep documentary evidence of PCS activities in case they are needed for the purposes of auditing. At present, pending full Medical Council endorsement, the JFICMI website cannot be used to record your PCS activities. We hope to be able to provide this service in the very near future. Doctors are advised to consult the College of Anaesthesiology website for details on enrollment in a scheme.