A Day in the Life of an RCSEd Vice Chair (Non-Doctor) – Meet Chris Shaw

The RCSEd Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care (FPHC) is currently recruiting for a Vice Chair (Non-Doctor) to take office from March 2025 following the retrial of Vice Chair (Non-Doctor) Mr Chris Shaw.

Faculty Manager, Beth Stevenson, sat down with Chris, who has held the role since October 2021, and learned more about his position as Vice Chair (Non-Doctor) and what he has brought to the table in his capacity. 

What motivated you to take on this position?

I’ve been involved with the faculty for some time as an immediate medical care examiner and more recently an elected advisory board member.  These are both comparatively niche roles and I was attracted to the co-vice chair role to increase my involvement (and learning) across the breadth of the faculty’s activities.

What knowledge and experience do you need for this role? 

Broad operational experience has proven the most beneficial, facilitation interaction with a wide range of faculty members, regional groups and external organisations. Often this is groups for whom pre-hospital clinical care is a small subset of their overall operational activity, as an example representing the faculty on the National Police Chief’s Council clinical governance forum. This requires a working knowledge of the faculty’s clinical standards and training course endorsement procedures and translating those to external organisational settings.

What set of skills and abilities do you require for this role?

Communication skills, particularly around negotiation are key. There are often differing professional opinions to consider, be that around clinical standards, training, equipment, and it’s important to represent the position of the faculty whilst considering and respecting the opinions of others.

What is the workload and how did you manage it?

There are definitely peaks and troughs of workload. The pre-publication review of the manual of core material was a particularly high-intensity workload period, necessitating negotiation with other team members about mutually convenient work periods. A degree of flexibility is needed, with commitments to external organisational meetings necessarily being during ‘office’ hours, but faculty committee and office bearer meetings running in the evenings. I would says there’s a consistent commitment of 1-2 days per month, with email queries and document reviews in between.

What have been some of the parts you have enjoyed most, and would you recommend the role to others?

The variety of the role is really interesting, working on nursing specific workstreams, wider faculty strategy and with multiple external organisations. I would absolutely recommend the role to others, and assure that whether paramedic or nurse by registration you’ll have the support of the advisory board to ensure representation across all the non-medical membership groups.