The heat is on

Summer has truly arrived, and after the sort of weekend that makes you glad to be alive – sitting in my garden enjoying the sunshine – I’ve spent much of this week in the stifling heat of London.

Unlike the pastoral bliss of Birmingham, the College is sweltering under the heat. The lack of air conditioning, and the resultant awful conditions our staff are currently experiencing, has only reinforced the need to move to more suitable premises.

Fortunately, the first phase in our historic move is just around the corner. From August, and for the subsequent two years from then we shall be relocated to our temporary ‘swing space’ at St Katherine Docks.

The move is beginning to feel very real, and with this comes excitement. However, as with any big change, there will be small sacrifices to be made, and for the two years at St Katherine Docks there will be no overnight accommodation. This will necessitate a change in working practices until we move into the new building at Euston Road, and to address this we are planning a new section of the RCGP website in order to keep the membership and staff alike up-to-date. The site will be live from the middle of June.

I urge all of you to submit entries for the new RCGP Caring About Carers Award - run in partnership with The Princess Royal Trust for Carers - which was reported in this month’s RCGP News. We GPs play a vital role in encouraging carers to look after their own health, as well as providing support to help them in their caring role, so I urge all of you to take part. Nominations for the award close on 11 June, and more information is available at http://www.rcgp.org.uk/.

The Spring Meeting earlier this month went brilliantly well, and I enjoyed immensely Sir John Tooke’s fascinating lecture on the personalisation of diabetes care. It was really great to see so many new members and fellows, and their families, and I was so impressed that so many doctors are so keen to get involved. It makes me feel really proud that we’ve managed to promote this initiative, and in doing so become a more inclusive and welcoming college.

You may have seen an article recently in Pulse about the shortage of doctors putting themselves forward for RCGP Fellowship. Fellowship is a wonderful thing: it’s an indicator that of a doctor providing high quality general practice above and beyond expectations. I’d urge all of you who have been a member of over five years to put yourselves forward. I was humbled at the Spring Meeting to be shaking hands with men and women who’d done such wonderful things in clinical care and research, and was so pleased that, through fellowship we can recognise and thank them for their hard work. The College draws its strength from the quality of its members and fellows, and because of them it is a force for good, a force for a change, and a source of the clinical leaders the NHS needs.