[The "Conseil national professionnel d'anatomie et cytologie pathologiques" (CNPath): At the service of the profession]

Abstract

The « conseils nationaux professionnels » (CNP) are professional boards existing since 2010. Their missions, organization and functioning have been defined by the decree 2019-17 of January 9, 2019. CNPs represent all the members of a medical specialty (or health profession). CNPs must include all the learned societies and all the representative structures and associations of the same medical specialty. Their bodies must strictly respect the parity between public and private health sectors. The main missions of CNPs include the contribution to the elaboration of the national priority directions for continuous medical education and the definition of the individual plan for continuous professional development (DPC) recommended for the specialty. CNPs also behave as a single window for ministries, State agencies, welfare system and colleges of physicians. They are likely to be strongly involved in the process of re-certification of physicians, established in July 2019. The Conseil national professionnel d'anatomie et cytologie pathologiques, termed CNPath, has been created in 2010 and officially recognized by the Ministry of Health in August 2019. The main current actions of CNPath are: the elaboration of the individual DPC scheme for the specialty and the definition of the minimal obligations requested for its validation, the long-expected recognition of the expertal consultation in pathology, the support to the nation-wide effort for the production of structured pathological reports and the launching of a plan for implementing digital pathology. An internet site is under construction, to diffuse all the relevant information and make available the documents useful to all pathologists.

Keywords: Conseil national professionnel; Continuous medical education; Continuous professional development; Développement professionnel continu; Medical specialties; Professional boards; Spécialité médicale.