WONCA Working Party: Education

Prof Val Wass OBE (UK)

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Prof Val Wass BSc (Hons), FRCGP, FRCP, MHPE, PhD, FHEA, FAoME is the WONCA representative for the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and has been an active member of the WONCA Working Party on Education. She is truly honoured and delighted to have been elected as Chair of the WONCA Working Party on Education.

She retired, last year, after five years as Head of the Keele School of Medicine, to take up a consultancy role as Emeritus Professor of Medical Education in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at Keele University in Staffordshire, UK.

Over the years she worked in Paediatric and Adult Nephrology for ten years before developing a strong interest in holistic generalist patient care and moving to train in Primary Care. After eleven years as a General Practitioner in Kent she joined Academic Medicine at Guy’s, Kings and St Thomas’s Medical school as a senior lecturer (1995-2003), and then became Professor of Community Based Medical, University of Manchester (2003-2009) before moving to Keele (2009-2105).

Val completed the International Masters in Health Profession Education (MHPE) at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and developed a long term interest in assessment methodology. This led to a PhD in Maastricht comparing traditional and new assessment tools. Subsequently research interests have centred on the assessment of professional behaviour and the impact of ethnic diversity on learning, communication and achievement. She has worked extensively internationally in both undergraduate and postgraduate education in over 25 countries and her publications have over 3,000 citations.

In the UK her National roles include Chair of the General Medical Council Assessment Advisory Board and Chair of a Higher Education England Task Force on GP Career Profiles in Medical Schools. Awards include the Higher Education Association National Teaching Fellowship, the RCGP William Pickles Medal, the RCGP President’s International Medal, the ASME Gold Medal 2015 for outstanding contribution to medical education and in 2016 Honorary Fellowship of the UK Academy of Medical Educators. In the 2015 New Year’s Honours she was awarded an OBE for services to medical education.

The WONCA Working Party on Education will support high quality education, training, assessment and continuing professional development in general practice / family medicine for medical students, doctors in training, and established general practitioners and family doctors.

Terms of reference:

The WONCA Working Party on Education will:

1. Support quality education, training, assessment and continuing professional development in general practice / family medicine.
2. Support the setting and maintaining for standards for education, training, assessment and continuing professional development in general practice / family medicine both nationally and internationally.
3. Develop education, training, assessment and continuing professional development policy for WONCA.
4. Provide links to education, training, assessment and continuing professional development resources and people for the member organisations of WONCA.
5. Support high quality education at WONCA conferences by acting as a resource, if invited, for Host Organising Committees of WONCA World and Regional conferences.
6. Act as a resource on education, training, assessment and continuing professional development for the WONCA Executive, World Council and Regional Councils.

“To have a positive effect on the functioning of health systems and ultimately on health outcomes of patients and populations, educational institutions have to be designed to generate an optimum instructional process.”
The Lancet Commission: Health Professionals for the 21st Century.

2016-2018 priorities

download detailed priorities document
Priorities for the group are to:

Raise the status of FM in the undergraduate (UG) curriculum: Lobbying through WONCA to influence the UG curriculum to support the Singapore and Rio statements. We aim to:
(i) improve the status of the discipline
(ii) attract the brightest and best into FM
(iii) foster high Academic status for FM

Programme accreditation: Continue to build on the published WONCA standards for PG and CPD education building a resource for WONCA to support programme accreditation. Work to promote PG training CPD for FM particularly for underserved areas.

Sharing resources: Develop processes for sharing education resources both within the Working Party and across the WONCA networks and for producing guideline documents applicable across the continuum of education.

Education for Primary Care
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WONCA CPD Standards 2016
WONCA Global Standards for PG FM- Guide for Program Development 2016
WONCA Global Standards for Postgraduate FM Education 2013
Checklist for Medical Student Experiences in FM 2012
Details on the process for development of Checklist for Medical Student Experiences can be found here

Two important key statements underpin the WPE strategy looking forward from 2016

The Rio statement 2016

The World Organisation of Family Doctors (WONCA) calls for all countries to increase the number of family doctors in order to achieve high quality comprehensive primary care and universal health coverage.
Effective strategies include: improving the skills of doctors already working in the community; recognising Family Medicine as a specialty and enhancing the academic basis of the discipline; strengthening the family medicine experience of all medical students; actively recruiting more medical graduates into more postgraduate family medicine training programs; giving all family doctors and members of their teams the resources to carry out their work, recognising their contribution, and ensuring their retention in the workforce – all in order to deliver excellent integrated cost-effective people-centred care.

WONCA Singapore statement 2007

Every medical school in the world should have an academic department of family medicine, or an equivalent academic focus.
Every medical student in the world should experience family practice as early as possible and as often as possible in their training.