Karachi:November 27:Vice-Chancellor, Dow University of Health Sciences, Prof Masood Hameed Khan on Saturday at a press briefing announced the launching of Pakistan College of General Practitioners (PCGP), which plans to teach and train in areas unique to general practice with national and international perspectives to match the demand and meet the international standards with training and assessment.

The duration of the PCGP programme is about two years. It shall also adopt various structured programmes for our local needs and have collaborations and accreditations as per requirements. The PCGP shall run its affairs by a faculty, a council and various bodies, committees and will conduct examinations as per standard of medical profession. The PCGP shall offer diploma, membership or fellowship status to the successful participants after assessment as per schedule.

He further said that the aim of the programme was to prepare GP specialist from the existing medical practitioners for the social and sustainable change in the practice of general medicine uniformly at the national level and also meet the international standards.

The programme has been planned for the competency of general practitioners for Education Leadership, Adult Learning, Instructions, Assessment, Curriculum, Programme Evaluation and Education Research.

Trained GP will take better care of the patients and will play an important role in running the affairs of the community health in an efficient, continuous, preventive, cost-effective and economical way. The GP can revive trust of the people in the health system and profession by this programme. The trained GP can also provide his services in primary health care centres, basic health care centres, and tertiary care hospitals.

Structured training programme of GPs will also help in developing knowledge, skill, competencies of the administration and implementation of health care policies.

Dr Muhammad Yahya from FRACGP said that trained GPs will be able to meet all the objectives.

The main objective of this programme was to identify academic areas of gaps which needed further improvement to maintain evidenced-based change for follow up and adoption. The GPs would evaluate the outcome in their practice and carry out peer review system. The GPs could also evaluate the process of students’ assessment in order to make valid and reliable decisions, for their choice to be a GP.

They can also have effective leadership, high quality teaching, facilitating skills at institutional level and teamwork capabilities.

During research on international issues related to GP they can provide evidence-based solutions and suggest implementations, besides scientific and practical advice to health and educational departments, with constructive feedback to the government, various organisation and institutions on the basis of scientific evaluation.The news.