Pauline was the Medical Director of the National Clinical Assessment Service (NCAS) in the UK until her retirement in January 2014. She joined NCAS in 2004 as Associate Director with particular responsibility for the design and development of programmes of assessment for doctors in the NHS whose performance had given cause for concern. She developed a workplace based assessment programme enhanced by assessment of health and behaviour, initially for doctors across all specialties and subsequently tailored for dentists and pharmacists. She had previously held senior posts in the NHS, including Medical Director of Newcastle City Health NHS Trust (1994 -1997), Chief Executive of Gateshead and South Tyneside Health Authority (1997 – 2002) and Associate Postgraduate Dean at the University of Newcastle (2002 – 2005).
She trained as a GP and was appointed as Lecturer in General Practice at Leicester Medical School. From 1989 – 1994 she lived in New Zealand and was Senior Lecturer in Primary Care at Auckland Medical School and subsequently the Academic Sub Dean, responsible for teaching, curriculum and assessment. Pauline has had a long-term interest in the assessment of clinical competence and has worked on a number of national initiatives including the development of assessment methods for the GMC’s Performance Procedures; the Workplace-Based Assessment Subcommittee of the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board, which developed the assessment framework for trainee doctors in the Foundation Programme; and the Revalidation Technical Group of the Royal College of General Practitioners. She has contributed widely to the literature on assessment and has been involved with international collaborations in the assessment of clinicians in practice. She was co founder of the International Physician Assessment Coalition (IPAC) which she chaired until September 2014. She continues to advise the GMC on its performance assessment methods and leads their programme of training for performance assessors.
Since her retirement from NCAS in January 2014 she has been appointed as an Adviser to the Medical Council of Ireland to assist the Council in their functions across the continuum of undergraduate, intern and postgraduate medical education and training and maintenance of competence. She is also an Associate Consultant with Edgecumbe Consulting, contributing to their programme of supporting Clinical Teams in Difficulty.
Current Professional Interests include:
Workplace based assessment methods and programmes
Training of assessors
Managing performance concerns
Factors affecting performance
Dysfunctional teams