The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners

Maintenance of Professional Standards – MOPS

The College’s MOPS programme is designed to enable the recertification of vocationally registered doctors working in general practice or rural hospital generalism. Recertification requirements for part time doctors are the same as for full time doctors. The flexibility of the MOPS programme allows for part time doctors to be able to attain the minimum requirements without difficulty.

Your MOPS credits are gained from a combination of activities from the following sections:

Professional Development Plan (PDP) – your development objectives and a plan of the specific activities that you will undertake to help achieve these. This is reviewed and updated annually.

Continuous Quality Improvement activities (CQI) – these are clinical audits to assess “where you are now” and the action to make improvements. The purpose of CQI activities is to improve patient care. 

If you are unable to identify a suitable existing activity, you can design your own for individual or practice use. Complete the 'Design Your Own CQI Application Form' and send to the College.  'Approved CQI Activities' are examples which have been designed by individual GPs for use in their own MOPS programme. These activities have been approved for general use.

Continuing Medical Education (CME) – activities to enhance your knowledge, skills, attitudes and judgement, to improve the health care you provide to your patients. 

Peer Review activities (PR) – these are activities that evaluate the performance of individuals or groups of practitioners, that involve systematic review of aspects of a doctor’s work. These activities normally include guidance, feedback and critique of the doctor’s performance.

You are encouraged to plan your MOPS programme with consideration of:

• the curriculum for general practitioners and the domains of practice
• the development and maintenance of core knowledge for general practice
• the diversity in general practice
• requirements of your practice
• maintaining a balance between your personal and professional life.

The most effective methods of improving practice include educational initiatives that:

• are based on the real work of the practitioner
• use individual practitioner data to compare with peers
• take place in the working environment of the practitioner, and
• produce individualised education programmes based on identified learning needs

MOPS runs in a three-year cycle (triennium) and the College programme satisfies the MCNZ requirements for recertification. The current triennium programme provided by the College reflects the strong evidence that traditional methods of maintaining professional standards, such as lectures and conferences, are only marginally useful.

Contact us for more information or telephone +64 4 496 5999 and speak with a MOPS coordinator.

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