Guidelines and resources

To enrol on the scheme, you must complete the online enrolment form. You will be asked to select enrolment into either the 'Specialist', 'General' or 'Supervised' scheme.

On the application form, you must complete all sections which are indicated as ‘mandatory’.

Before you begin, make sure you have the following information, relevant to your division, available:

Specialist, General and Supervised

• Irish Medical Council registration number
• Email address – please provide a permanent email address as all correspondence will be sent to this address. 
• Credit/debit card to pay the enrolment fee

General and Supervised only

• Professional qualifications
• Current post/position details
• Previous post/post history

Please note
You will not be able to save and return later to your enrolment application form, therefore we advise that you set aside enough time to complete the enrolment form in full. 

There is an annual fee of €250, approved by the Irish Medical Council.

Please note

• RCSI Fellows and Members (working in Ireland) who wish to pay their Fellowship/Membership fee and their PCS fee at the same time are entitled to a discount on the PCS fee.
• When you login to your PCS ePortfolio, you will be advised that your PCS fee is due. Click on the ‘pay fee’ button. You can choose to ‘pay PCS and FAMP (Fellows and Members) fee’ together (reduced PCS fee of €100), or ‘pay PCS only fee’, which will enrol you for the term of PCS.
• If you have any queries regarding this process, please contact us.

Creating a professional development plan (PDP) is also encouraged to plan your activities during the year and set out goals for your personal development. By creating a professional development plan at the beginning of the year, it can be used to reflect on and monitor your progress throughout the year.

You can also claim CPD credits in the Internal Category for completing a professional development plan.

• Log into the PCS ePortfolio.
• Click on the 'add record' button.
• If you have a verification document on your computer, please click on the ‘browse’ button to select this document.
• Enter the date of the meeting/activity.
• Choose the category from the drop-down list: internal/external/personal learning/research or training/audit.
• Click the relevant domain of good professional practice reflected in the activity where possible – this is not a mandatory field at present.
• Enter the credits allocated to this activity.
• Enter the activity description – this can be the name of the activity.
• Enter the location.
• Click on the ‘add activity’ button. If you wish to edit this record or delete it, click on the relevant button. You can also clone records by selecting the 'clone this record' option and entering the new date/details.  

Please note
Development purpose and reference number are not mandatory fields.

If you have any queries regarding this process, please contact us.

You are required to undertake at least one clinical/practice audit annually. Typically, this would be of an aspect of clinical practice, such as outcomes from a procedure, compliance with guidelines or standards or an evaluation of processes. If you do not undertake any clinical work, then your audit should be relevant to your area of professional practice (for example, teaching). It is assumed that the audit would equate to about one hour per month of audit activity, but it may not be evenly spread through the year.

You should provide a summary of your audit as a minimum. When submitting evidence of an audit for the Professional Competence Scheme, in addition to meeting the criteria, the audit must be signed/verified by a consultant supervisor, clinical director or other appropriate clinician other than the registrant.

Alternatively, you could provide a copy of (or link to) a published abstract or paper. Individual patient identifiers should be removed from audits before uploading to the ePortfolio. If your audit spans over two PCS years, you should record your audit in the year you completed most of the work.

The PCS Audit User Guide is available for download below.

You can login to your RCSI PCS ePortfolio on your smartphone and save the mobile adapted version of PCS to open enabling you to view your details and upload activities.

Please follow the step-by-step guide below on how to add the PCS icon shortcut to your smartphone.

For further guidance, you can access the archive of email communications that we have sent in the past to our enrolees:

• Access the regular newsletters sent to our PCS enrolees
• Access the standalone communications sent to our PCS enrolees