To find out how the College is responding to the survey feedback, we spoke to Katherine Timms, Director of Professional Practice at RCPath. Katherine explores the findings of the survey and the College’s subsequent commitments to strengthen our communication, workforce planning, community and support for members. 

What was the purpose of the Member Survey 2024? 

Although the College regularly engages with its members, it had been 6 years since we last did a full member survey in 2018. We strive to be a listening organisation that acts on what our members tell us they need, and so this survey was long overdue. 

What were the main positives that the survey feedback revealed? 

Many areas of importance for our members are aligned with our College Strategy 2024–2029. We have projects in development that will provide further support to individuals and add value to membership. Members continue to place high value on our role in maintaining the standard of training, the provision of CPD opportunities and being the voice of pathology. It’s positive to see that all these areas have seen a significant increase in member satisfaction since our 2018 survey. 

 

What were the main areas of improvement identified in the results?  

We had positive feedback in many areas of importance for members, but we also identified some key areas of improvement. 

To address these, the College is making 6 commitments to enhance our service and support for members. These commitments encompass communication, community, content, workforce, query management and continuing professional development. 
 

A common concern highlighted in the survey feedback was around the overall value for money for members. How would you like to respond to these concerns? 

Many members highlighted the importance of the value of membership, and it is clear from some of the responses that not everyone is aware of all the work we do to support pathology. 

We focus heavily on delivering the work we set out to achieve in our College Strategy 2024–2029, providing key services for members, the wider pathology community and, ultimately, patients. However, we don’t always communicate this as well as we could and that needs to change.  

We’re keen to address this so our members can see the value of their membership to them as individuals and to pathology as a whole. Firstly, we are starting to deliver a communications programme to new fellows that should help to clarify the value of College membership, and direct members to the full range of resources and support available to them. 

We are also upgrading our database and website systems as part of our digital transformation work. These upgrades will enable us to deliver tailored communications, ensuring that members receive information and resources that are directly relevant to them, and in a prompt fashion. 
 

Many respondents voiced a desire for the College to take a stronger stance on advocating for workplace issues. How might the College address this feedback? 

We accept that we could do better in relation to workforce advocacy, which is why earlier this year we launched a new Workforce Strategy 2025–2028. The strategy is grounded by 6 core pillars: intelligence, engagement, training, retention, reform and contingency planning.  

RCPath Workforce Strategy (2025–2028) strategic aims
1.	Gather and report on intelligence
2.	Engage and influence stakeholders
3.	Enable the next generation of pathologists (train)
4.	Support our established workforce (retain)
5.	Transform ways of working (reform)
6.	Prioritise patient care (contingency)

We’ve already made strong progress, with a renewed approach to data collection through a comprehensive workforce census to members, direct-to-service surveys (supported by our specialty advisory committees) and comprehensive FOI requests to trusts. We want to be a stronger, better-informed voice for the profession and lobby harder for the changes our members need. 
 

One interesting point that the data raised was that, although many members take pride in their membership, a smaller proportion feel a sense of belonging to the College. How can the College build a stronger RCPath community? 

Since the pandemic we all see each other less, and this has, to some extent, eroded the sense of belonging some of our members feel to the College. We are carrying out some exciting work to address this, utilising innovative digital platforms to enable College subgroups to come together and feel a stronger sense of community and belonging.  

We are currently piloting 2 online community platforms. Our Medical Examiner/Medical Examiner Officer Hub (ME/MEO Hub) has been live since December 2024, and now has almost 400 members, a regular webinar series and active discussion posts. This month we launched the Haematopathology Hub, providing a much-needed collaborative space for this subspecialty. We intend to expand on these pilot communities soon. 
 

Now that the results have been analysed, what are the next steps? 

We have already started work across the 6 key commitments developed in response to member feedback. We plan to update our members quarterly on our progress via email. 

I want to extend a personal thanks to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts in the Member Survey 2024. At the heart of this survey – and everything we do – is our commitment to our members, and we want you to know that we’re listening and taking your feedback seriously. We’re excited about what’s ahead and are dedicated to developing our services to better support, represent and celebrate our members and the profession. 

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Please take a look at our Member Survey 2024 webpage for more information on the survey results and the College’s commitments. If you have any questions, please contact the Member Engagement and Support team.