Guidelines and resources

To enrol on the RCSI Professional Competence Scheme, you must first sign up to the PCS Portal. Once signed up, you will be required to sign in and register by completing the online enrolment form. A step-by-step guide is available below. 

You will be asked to confirm if you are engaged in practice of medicine/not engaged in the practice of medicine; select the registration type that you hold with the Irish Medical Council 'Specialist', 'General' or 'Supervised'.

On the online application form, you must complete all sections which are indicated as ‘mandatory’.

Before you begin, make sure you have the following information, relevant to your division, available:

• Specialist, General and Supervised
• Irish Medical Council registration number
• Email address – please provide a permanent email address as all correspondence will be sent to this address
• Credit/debit card to pay the enrolment fee

General and Supervised only

• Professional qualifications
• Current post/position details
• Previous post/post history

For users that have previously accessed the old RCSI PCS Portal, you must sign up to the new portal. Once you complete the sign up, you will have access to the new PCS Portal and will need to pay your PCS fee to re-enrol.

A step-by-step guide is available below.

There is an annual fee of €250, approved by the Irish Medical Council.

Please note

• RCSI Fellows and Members (working in Ireland) who wish to pay their Fellowship/Membership fee and their PCS fee at the same time are entitled to a discount on the PCS fee.
• When you sign in to the portal, you will be advised that your PCS fee is due. Click on the ‘pay now’ button at the top of the screen.
• You will be required to confirm your details, e.g. registration details. Click ‘save’ and ‘continue’.
• You will also be required to confirm your personal details, educational details, work details; click ‘next’.
• Your payment summary will open. You can choose to ‘pay PCS and FAMP (Fellows and Members) fee’ together (reduced PCS fee of €100), or ‘pay PCS only fee’, which will enrol you for the term of PCS.

If you have any queries regarding this process, please contact us.

Creating a professional development plan (PDP) is a mandatory requirement. It allows you to plan your activities during the year and set out goals for your personal development. By creating a PDP at the beginning of the year, it can be used to reflect on and monitor your progress throughout the year, including planning how your activities will match your annual PCS requirements and review how many credits you think you will be able to accumulate during the year.

To achieve the best results in professional performance, PDPs need to be prospective rather than retrospective.

PDPs should consider all the various roles that you fulfil in your job and the steps you need to take to update your knowledge, maintain your experience and improve your skills if necessary.

How to create your plan

• Sign in to the PCS Portal to begin your plan.
• Click on the 'PCS plan' tile and complete your plan by identifying events, meetings, learning materials or discussion topics that will assist you in meeting your requirements. Your CPD activities must cover each of the eight domains of good professional practice at least once in a three-year period.
• Once you have your plan created and submitted, you will receive 5 CPD credits.
• If you send your plan to be reviewed by a colleague, both you and the reviewer will receive an additional CPD credit in the work-based learning category.
• If you reflect on your plan at the end of the year, you will receive an additional CPD credit in the work-based learning category. 

To add a new record to your profile:

• Sign into the PCS Portal
• Click on the ‘add records’ tile
• Enter the date of the activity
• Choose the category from the dropdown list
• Choose the activity type
• Select the relevant domain of good professional practice reflected in the activity where possible – you can select one or many domains
• Select the number of credits allocated to this activity (slide the button to select the correct credits)
• Enter the activity description – this can be the name of the activity
• Enter the development purpose
• Press ‘submit’
• You can now view your new uploaded CPD record – edit, clone and delete the record functionality is available
• You can also add your supporting documentation (certificate of attendance etc.)
• Select the ‘search CPD records’ to search for uploaded CPD activity
• You can return to the records page by clicking on ‘<Back to RCSI‘ at the top of the page.

You are required to undertake at least one practice review each year with a minimum of 10 required credits. There are three areas of focus for your review.

• Clinical audit: A clinically-led quality improvement process, involving the structure, processes and outcomes of care, that seeks to improve patient experience and outcomes through the systematic review of care against explicit criteria and acting to improve care when standards are not met. If required, improvements should be implemented at an individual, team or organisation level and then the care re-evaluated to confirm improvements. Audits can be undertaken at individual, practice, specialty, hospital, or national level.
• Quality improvement: Clearly defining a problem, analysing the variations within it, setting a specific goal, and developing a hypothesis about potential interventions or changes that could help achieve this goal. These proposed changes or interventions are then tested on a small scale to determine if they produce the desired outcome.
• Practice evaluation: A systematic assessment of the performance of an individual or a group of doctors by members of the same profession or team, or by patients.

Examples of practice review activities

• Audit or quality improvement project relative to your scope of practice (may be a local, regional, national or internation audit/quality improvement)
• Comparing processes or patient/healthcare outcomes with best practice
• Audit of departmental outcomes including information on where you fit within a team
• Audit of performance in an area of practice measured against that of your peers
• Taking an aspect of practice and comparing performance to national standards
• Review of critical incidents/significant events
• Review of compliments and complaints
• Practice visits to review registered medical practitioner’s performance
• Performance appraisal
• Multisource feedback (e.g 360 appraisals/feedback)
• Structured feedback from colleagues/patients/students
• Patient satisfaction survey

How to record a practice review

• Sign into the PCS Portal
• Click on the ‘add records’ tile
• Enter the date of the activity
• Choose the ‘practice review’ category from the dropdown list
• Choose the activity type
• Select the relevant domain of good professional practice reflected in the activity where possible – you can select one or many domains
• Select the number of credits allocated to this activity – You must have a minimum of 10 credits (hours) of practice review activity to be on target with this category
• Enter the activity description – this can be a description of your practice review
• Enter the development purpose
• Press ‘submit’
• You can now view your uploaded review – edit, clone and delete the record functionality is available
• You can also add your supporting documentation – as evidence you should upload a summary of your practice review activity as a minimum.
• Select the ‘search CPD records’ to search for uploaded CPD activity
• You can return to the records page by clicking on ‘<Back to RCSI’ at the top of the page.

Work-based learning involves your reflection of your clinical and non-clinical work. When you participate in work-based learning you analyse and assess areas of your professional practice to gain insight on best practice and improvements where possible. Work-based learning aims to make an individual more aware of their own professional knowledge and action by ‘challenging assumptions of everyday practice and critically evaluating practitioners’ own responses to practice situations.

Some sample activities include:

• Multi-disciplinary clinical activities (MDTs, MDMs)
• Grand and Schwartz rounds 
• Joint review and discussion of cases
• Structured review of records and processes of care
• Practice management
• Peer review
• Research and scholarly activity
• Personal learning (e.g. journal reading, viewing recorded lectures etc.)
• Education, teaching, training, mentoring and supervision
• Assessment of trainees and peers
• Organised learning activities (including journal clubs)
• Participation in RCSI, national or international bodies in the development of standards for clinical or non-clinical care
• Management, policy and advocacy
• Internal teaching session
• Communication training (including open disclosure)
• Review of patients’ unmet needs (PUN) and doctors’ educational needs (DEN)
• Review and critique of patient data 
• Critique of video review of consultation
• Reflection on health and well-being
• Health, well-being and staff support meetings
• Practice management systems enhancements
• Participation in research (and education)
• Participation on RCSI or other committees that are related to clinical care, education or research
• Participation in morbidity and mortality meetings
• Examining candidates for RCSI examinations
• Research, publication and peer review for journals and texts
• Working as an assessor or reviewer for the Medical Council or training bodies

Accredited CPD activity includes attendance at relevant educational conferences, courses, and workshops at local, national, international level and accredited CPD offered in the workplace. This includes clinical or non-clinical CPD.

It is important that a CPD activity used to count for a doctor’s annual CPD requirement must be accredited in Ireland or in the State where it is delivered and be considered acceptable to the operator of the doctor’s PCS as meeting international standards.

Examples of activities include:

• Local, regional, national, international accredited meetings
• Conferences/seminars/webinars
• Presentations to scientific meetings, training bodies, college and medical societies
• Education, training and simulation programmes
• Courses, workshops, seminars, diplomas
• Online learning courses, modules, workshops
• Masterclass series and webcasts
• Relevant academic qualification (degree, diploma, course)