A specialist training programme for new family doctors, presented by the Malta College of Family Doctors, has been approved by the Specialists Accreditation Committee (SAC), the body that advises the government on all post-graduate medical training issues.
The government is bound by EU directives to set up a training scheme for new family doctors who wish to work in the national primary health care service, and family medicine (general practice) has since November, 2003 been a speciality in Malta, at par with all other specialities.
The Malta College of Family Doctors is represented on the SAC, and is responsible for advising the committee on family medicine. The college has helped set up a register of Specialists in Family Medicine, has designed the Specialist Training Programme for Family Medicine, and will be involved in developing the relevant curriculum and in the assessment process for the trainee family doctors in conjunction with the SAC.
Completion of Specialist Training in Family Medicine will allow successful trainees to become specialists in family medicine with an international CCST certificate issued by the SAC, and will allow full membership status in the college (MMCFD). Last year the college awarded the MMCFD certificate to 230 of its members who have become specialists in family medicine on the basis of experience and training.
The college has been involved in the initial set-up of the University of Malta's Department of Family Medicine, in the work of the SAC and now in the setting up of specialist training in family medicine. Trainers have been trained over the past four years for this task, with the expert assistance of the Royal College of General Practitioners. Other college initiatives have included the introduction of Irish College of General Practitioners’ Diplomas for local family doctors, a Masters programme provided by the University of Ulster, a local Diploma in Family Practice, a research project using electronic medical records and a continued medical education programme that has been running since 1992.