In 2022, the 46 member societies of the Spanish Federation of Medical and Scientific Associations (FACME, for its Spanish initials) developed a proposal for a Spanish model of recertification, a single, consensus model that culminated in the final document published alongside this letter. To create the document, the scientific societies and an ad hoc FACME advisory board comprising representatives of different societies, including the Spanish Society of Neurology, held numerous meetings to define a model of recertification, placing an emphasis on scientific rigour, simplicity, and compatibility with models from other countries.
The document establishes that the evaluation of competences and groups of competences involves 2 types of activities: “type A” or care activities, weighted at 60%, and “type B” activities, including continued medical training, teaching, and research activities, weighted at 40%.
This model emphasises that the recertification process should not constitute a bureaucratic burden for physicians, seeking to promote applications for this recognition of care performance in daily practice (using for this purpose the clinical practice indicators provided by directors and in annual management agreements, self-audits, or individuals’ registers of procedures) and other training, teaching, and research activities.
The recertification period established is 6 years, with each scientific society requiring a minimum of 6 competences in 6 years (or a percentage equivalent to 6 out of 40 competences, ie, 15% of all competences), evenly distributed over both 3-year periods; evidence must be supplied for at least 3 of the 6 years under evaluation.
Each society will appoint a Recertification Committee made up of specialist members with expertise in teaching and evaluation tools. The committee’s responsibilities are to define and periodically review the competences, the indicators used for each, and the thresholds for the consideration of “competent”; and to review individual applications and to draft proposals for “recertified” or “pending recertification” status, identifying areas in which further evidence is needed. Recertification committees may consult the FACME advisory board wherever they consider this necessary during the evaluation process, with a view to ensuring homogeneity and consensus on the criteria applied.
Finally, FACME and all its members hope for medical recertification to be the responsibility of the central government, rather than being transferred to the different Spanish autonomous communities, in order to guarantee that criteria are applied equitably and homogeneously; this desire was communicated to the Director General for Professional Coordination of the Spanish Ministry of Health after her participation in the working session “Medical recertification: the convergence of healthcare administrations, the General Council of Official Medical Associations, and Medical Societies,” held in Madrid on 21 April 2022.
