Short message from the President

Hello all!

Before we all take our well-deserved Christmas and New Year break, I wanted to summarise some activities and highlight some important dates.

First, I wanted to thank all committee members and chairs, congress and webinar contributors for their hard work and dedication, the College would not be able to function without all the volunteer work! We continue to look for new committee members, with a call to go out shortly asking people to join the ECEIM institutional review committee and the Marketing Committee.

After a successful return to an in-person Congress in Rome, the next Congress is set to take place from October 27th-28th 2023 in Lyon, France. As a reminder, it was decided to hold the AGM online, 1 week after the Congress. A 30-minute Board and Committee presentation/Q&A session will occur in-person at the Congress. This is a trial run! The Board will re-assess the AGM and Congress attendance and look at any negative knock-on effects to holding the AGM in the format.

The ATAC committee recently sent out a survey asking ECEIM College members what topic they would like to see reviewed in the 2023 Consensus statement. We will be announcing this topic shortly once the ATAC committee has completed the data analysis. The Examination Committee has confirmed that the exam is set to take place from Monday January 30th - Thursday February 2nd 2023. The new ECEIM website is expected to launch by the end of 2022/beginning of 2023. A huge thanks to our IT/website administrator Erwin van den Berg for all of his help and hard work getting the website up and running.

An EBVS meeting was held online November 23rd-24th 2022. The requirement for reference letters when recertifying was voted on with 23/26 Colleges voting in favour to remove this requirement. Colleges can now choose to use reference letters or a self-declaration of good professional standing; ECEIM will be using the self-declaration route. In addition, EBVS will be putting together broad principals around resident welfare for inclusion in their P&P. These will focus on ways to ensure the welfare of residents via the Institution training centre application, with the inclusion of a working time limit based on EU laws. Flexible pathways, as touched on at the AGM in Rome, were also discussed. It was suggested that Colleges form Job Task Analysis to evaluate whether their curriculum, including potential flexible pathways, exam blueprint and exams all align to the tasks being undertaken by the Diplomates. The last point of discussion was the restriction put in place by EBVS which does not allow residents in a training programme to use ‘ECEIM resident’ or similar descriptions after their names. A proposal will be brought to the next EBVS meeting in April 2023 to discuss removal of the restriction.

An online ECEIM Board meeting was held on December 13th, 2022. Educational and operational topics were discussed, with a focus on the institutional review. Ruth Morgan is overseeing this review, which is focusing on re-evaluating ECEIM institutional standard and alternative residency training programmes and institutional requirements. The next ECEIM Board meeting is planned for January 2023.

Finally, I want to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and New Year!

Cheers!

Lisa
ECEIM President

_{Photo by Grant Ritchie on Unsplash}