The College of Paramedics: 10 years on since its formation

It gives us great pleasure to be writing the first column as a regular feature for the Journal of Paramedic Practice (JPP) as part of a new partnership with the College of Paramedics. The JPP is offering members of the College a package that includes all annual issues of the JPP, the International Paramedic Practice journal along with all the monthly continuing professional development (CPD) modules.

The package has been designed to provide the full range of JPP products for a significantly discounted subscription and through convenient quarterly direct debit payments. Under the new partnership arrangement, which began in December 2011, the JPP will also publish the College's quarterly newsletter. We are delighted with this new and exciting partnership and look forward to working with the JPP as the official partner journal of the College of Paramedics.

Paramedics were registered in 2001 under the Council for Professions Supplementary to Medicine (CPSM) and then later under the Health Professions Council (HPC). The professional body was formed as the British Paramedic Association (BPA) in 2001, became the College of Paramedics in 2007 and reached its tenth anniversary during 2011. The founders of the BPA, and more recently the elected office-holders of the College of Paramedics, have worked tirelessly to ensure that paramedics have a formal body that can represent them on issues that would not be within the remit of other bodies. Due to the rapidly evolving nature and relative infancy of our profession it is understandable that many paramedics raise questions about the individual roles of the regulator and professional body. In this context, before describing the role of the College of Paramedics, a short overview of the roles of the other bodies follows: