Meeting our members' needs

Our impact highlights

Advancing practice around the world

There are now more obstetricians and gynaecologists trained to the highest standards around the world, which means more women and girls are receiving the highest standards of care. In 2025, we grew our membership by 4.5% to reach a record high of 19,000 members across 124 countries.

We welcomed over 700 new Fellows and Members at nine membership ceremonies, including one in London at the RCOG World Congress and another at an event in Chennai, India, which was organised by the All India Coordinating Committee. When our Members join us, they stay with us – annual member retention remained at 96% this year.

We provided more examination places in 2025 than ever before, equipping healthcare professionals with essential knowledge and skills, and improving education, training and standards of care globally. A total of 10,941 candidates sat our three membership exams across 56 countries, which was a 6% increase from 2024, and a 37% increase across our five-year strategy period. This is allowing more doctors worldwide to progress in their careers, which will improve women’s access to skilled O&G care.

We recruited and trained over 120 new clinical and lay examiners in 2025, bringing the total number of Members and Fellows contributing to the Part 3 examination to 783 across 24 countries. This growth means more doctors can take the MRCOG Part 3 exam and be assessed to the highest possible standard. We’ve also made sure there’s greater diversity in our group of examiners, which has helped to ensure assessors represent candidates across the globe.

This year, we opened two new MRCOG Part 3 examination centres in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. These centres will allow more doctors in South Asia and the Middle East to complete the MRCOG exam and progress in their careers. This will help develop a skilled O&G workforce around the world.

A major milestone was achieved in October 2025 when we signed the Malaysia Accreditation Agreement with the Ministry of Health Malaysia, the Academy of Medicine of Malaysia, and O&G society Persatuan Obstetrik and Ginekologi Nasional (PROGEN).

The agreement means that our new accreditation model will be embedded in Malaysia’s postgraduate training system from July 2026. This will support the government of Malaysia’s ambition to expand the number of O&G specialists in the country.

In 2025, 192 doctors completed the UK O&G specialty training programme. This involves a minimum of seven years of structured training to develop their careers in medical and surgical fields. The doctors were all recommended to the General Medical Council (GMC) to receive their completion of training certificate. They are now qualified to enter the specialist O&G workforce and contribute to delivering NHS maternity and gynaecology services.

Excluding our World Congress, we delivered 48 educational events and courses worldwide, which were attended by 3,657 delegates. More than 36,200 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits were awarded to Members and healthcare professionals who completed courses, went to conferences, and carried out online learning activities. This supported them to maintain their professional development and meet revalidation requirements, so they could continue providing high standards of care in O&G.

We ran new educational events for O&G professionals on chronic pelvic pain and using ultrasound to diagnose endometriosis. The aim is to help women who have these conditions to be diagnosed and get treatment quicker, improving outcomes.

In 2025, more than 2,200 clinical experts supported our work on a voluntary basis in three different areas. These were: clinical quality, research and patient safety; education, exams and professional development; and supporting the O&G profession at all stages in their careers.

Without this clinical support we could not achieve our mission of improving the health of women and girls globally. Getting involved with the work of the College is a great way for Members to meet other clinicians from across the globe, learn new skills, and make a difference to clinical practice and how patients receive care.

We held 28 elections to choose clinical leaders of the College, including the new President and Vice President team. These professionals help to oversee the clinical, educational, professional, academic and ethical activities of the College, making sure what we do is driven by leaders in O&G.

We worked with our International Representative Committees (IRCs) – which represent our work globally – to develop and support O&G doctors outside of the UK. The IRCs act as a point of contact between Members in their country and the College. We supported the IRCs by holding a meeting to showcase their work and bring everyone together to hear about our new strategy.

Providing the guidance and support professionals need to excel

In June 2025, we welcomed 3,165 attendees from 95 countries to London for the RCOG World Congress. The event had 250 speakers and the largest programme in its history, providing Members and the wider O&G community with an opportunity to build their skills and knowledge. By bringing together clinicians, researchers, and professionals in education from around the world, we are enhancing clinical practice and sharing expertise and innovation, which supports improvements in women’s health.

Our census of the UK O&G workforce revealed that nearly two thirds (65%) of the obstetricians and gynaecologists who responded are at risk of burnout. We will use this information to better understand the support that our members need and to call on governments across the UK for additional resources in women’s healthcare. As part of this work, we will update our ‘Supporting our Doctors’ suite of services, including: peer-to-peer support; information on returning to work after parental leave, sickness or a career break; and workplace champions to address undermining and bullying behaviour.

An evaluation of our formal structured training is helping us understand what is working well with the new curriculum for O&G specialty trainees and what needs improving. We will share a report summarising the evaluation of Curriculum 2024 with the GMC in early 2026, along with an action plan to further improve O&G standards of training.

Long gynaecology waiting lists, workforce shortages and increasingly complex surgeries have limited O&G trainees’ exposure to surgical skills practice and training. This was the finding of a report we published in February 2025 on surgical training in the UK. The O&G Surgical Skills Interim Report sets out our recommendations for how to improve O&G surgical training. It is part of a wider project to develop and shape the future of O&G surgical training in the UK and globally.

We continued to review and improve our examination revision resources to provide the best possible exam support for O&G professionals. Now, we have 430 validated, fit-for-purpose questions to support candidates to prepare and revise for the MRCOG Part 1 exam. A working group reviewed the MRCOG Part 2 examination resources, producing 200 new single best answer questions. These developments continue to strengthen the quality, validity and accessibility of our learning resources.

In 2025, we published nine new pieces of evidence-based guidance and information for patients and updated 15 existing resources. This is helping members to enhance their clinical practice, strengthen their decision-making, and deepen their knowledge and understanding. Our patient information provides women and families with clear, reliable and up-to-date information, supporting them to make informed decisions about care.

Tackling racism and discrimination in O&G

We launched Race Equity in the Workforce, a free online resource to tackle racism and discrimination in the workplace. Aimed at leadership, management and employees, the resources cover five key areas: anti-discrimination leadership; diverse and inclusive teams; support for doctors; empowerment; and psychological safety.

Developing partnerships and expanding our influence

Our impact highlights

Maternity safety

Our reviewed and updated Maternity Service Standards Framework aims to reduce the variation in maternity care across the UK and improve outcomes for mothers and babies. The framework helps commissioners and service providers deliver high-quality services, making them more consistent, safer, equitable and compassionate.

Women and families will be able to provide feedback on their experience of maternity and neonatal care in 2026. This is thanks to our collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to develop a new Patient Report Experience Measure (PREM) for maternity and neonatal care. PREMs capture patients’ experience of receiving care.

The College worked with partners as part of the National Maternity and Perinatal Audit (NMPA) to provide a unique picture of birth trends and outcomes for 592,594 people who gave birth in England, Scotland and Wales in 2023. The State of the Nation, published in September 2025, summarised findings from the largest evaluation of maternity services in the world.

The College’s Maternity Safety Independent Advisory Group continued to provide us with independent expertise and advice to improve maternity safety and care. The group, established in 2023, is made up of professionals with knowledge and expertise of current best practice in maternity safety as well as people with lived experience. 

Our Women’s Network continued to play a vital role in what we do. Most members are women with personal experience of maternity or gynaecological services so their guidance helps ensure we’re patient-centred. Members have acted as lay examiners, sat on College committees and presented at our events, including World Congress. Overall, patient involvement was embedded in College-wide initiatives and research projects, including the PREM and NMPA projects mentioned above.

Our Avoiding Brain Injury in Childbirth (ABC) programme is being introduced across England, helping staff better identify signs that a baby is in distress during labour so they can act quickly. This follows a successful pilot across 12 maternity units in England which addressed two key contributors to avoidable brain injury: recognising and responding to fetal deterioration in labour and managing impacted fetal head during caesarean birth. The pilot was delivered in collaboration with the Royal College of Midwives and The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute at the University of Cambridge.

Along with the Royal College of Midwives, we hosted a maternity safety summit to support NHS trusts and local integrated care boards to address the safety crisis facing maternity and neonatal care. Delegates heard from the Secretary of State for Health and Care about the forthcoming maternity review and plans for supporting services to improve.

Women who are non-English speakers should have access to free professional interpreters at all of their maternity appointments. This was one of the guidelines we set for NHS providers and commissioners to ensure equitable, safe maternity care for non-English speakers. The Cross-Cultural Communication and Language Support: Standards for Maternity Care and Women’s Health was published in December to help plan how services can close gaps in equity.

Raising awareness of women’s health

Our press work positioned the College as the voice of the O&G profession on critical issues such as gynaecology waiting lists, gaps in women’s health, workforce challenges, reproductive rights and maternity safety. We shared 49 press releases and statements and managed over 400 media enquiries to achieve over 3,500 pieces of coverage across broadcast, national and regional news media.

Improving women’s sexual, reproductive and maternal health globally

We advocated for key issues affecting women’s health and rights on the global stage. In March 2025, we participated in the 69th session of the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) in New York and in May the College took part in the 78th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva.

Our Essential Gynaecological Skills training, which covers topics such as cervical cancer, emergency gynaecology, and violence against women, was included in the government of Nigeria’s Safe Motherhood Strategy. Government representatives from six states across Nigeria said they wanted to introduce the training in their state level training plans. We continued to work with the Africa Center of Excellence for Population Health and Policy and the Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Nigeria to deliver the Gynaecological Health Matters (GHM) programme in Nigeria. Essential Gynaecological Skills training is a key part of GHM.

The programme trained 20 expert trainers and 180 healthcare providers in Kano and Abuja states and led to the Government validating and adopting training materials from the College. Some 99% of trainees said they were satisfied with the training and 84% showed a measurable improvement in their knowledge.

The College expanded its global work to end FGM/C by strengthening training for doctors in Egypt, developing new partnerships in South and Southeast Asia, and expanding training to equip doctors with advocacy and influencing skills. The advocacy and influencing training will be introduced in new regions of Egypt and adapted for other countries with high rates of medicalised FGM/C. Working with Equality Now, ARROW, Orchid Project and Asia Network, the College also delivered the first analysis of medicalised FGM/C across South and Southeast Asia. This provides evidence and clear recommendations to prevent harm to girls in healthcare settings.

Influencing policy, speaking up and taking action to improve women’s healthcare

Our research found that just 5% of women think the UK government is treating women’s health as a priority. Some 46% found accessing women’s health services ‘difficult’ or ‘very difficult’. The College used these findings to write an open letter to the UK Government on International Women’s Day, co-signed by 48 other organisations, calling for women’s health to finally be prioritised.

We successfully campaigned for women to be removed from the criminal law related to abortion in England and Wales. Working with partners, we gathered the support of hundreds of MPs who voted so women would no longer be subject to years-long investigations, criminal charges, and custodial sentences for ending their own pregnancy, and kept the issue high on the media agenda across 2025.

The College welcomed this milestone as we have campaigned for decriminalisation since 2017. We’re now focused on ensuring the House of Lords supports the amendment so abortion is recognised as essential healthcare and regulated like any other medical procedure.

The UK Government’s 10 Year Health Plan highlighted women’s health hubs as an example of how to deliver effective local care, following our detailed response to their call for evidence. We urged commitment to women’s health hubs as a proven way to improve access to care, efficiency and prevent conditions, securing 500+ media articles across 2025 amplifying our campaign. We also called for fully funded, safely staffed maternity services, and investment in gynaecology, hospital buildings, digital infrastructure and research. These priorities were reinforced in our Women’s Health Manifesto, setting out clear actions we wanted from the 10 Year Health Plan.

The UK Government announced a review of the Women’s Health Strategy for England following calls from the College to refresh the strategy three years after its initial publication. The College published an analysis of progress on the 2022 Women’s Health Strategy, noting some improvements but highlighting key gaps. We are continuing to work with the Department of Health and Social Care to make sure it targets the areas most in need of progress.

Since the launch of our Waiting for a Way Forward report in November 2024, the College has continued to make the case for tackling gynaecology waiting lists in the media and with policymakers. We have maintained our interactive data dashboard on gynaecology waiting lists, which has informed tailored briefings for MPs about waiting lists in their area ahead of debates on women’s health in Parliament. As a result of our work, the UK Government announced an increase in funding for gynaecology in the Elective Care Plan in January 2025.

Parliamentary committees reviewed the evidence we submitted to inquiries on the early years sector, obesity, reproductive health, FGM/C and inequalities in women’s health. The College also briefed MPs and Peers on key debates and legislation, including the Women’s Health Strategy for England, maternity services and the Tobacco and Vapes Bill.

Becoming more resilient and accessible

Our impact highlights

Improving members’ online experience and reaching more people

We are reaching more members with the information they need by providing them with clinical guidance, patient information, educational resources and courses on our website. There were 5.2 million visits to our website in 2025, which was a 20% increase compared to 2024.  

This year, we carried out further work to deliver a new customer relationship management (CRM) system to improve services for our members. This is making it easier for members to manage their RCOG membership online.

We made our online learning platform, RCOG Learning, more engaging for members by making our courses easier to find and adding more interactive elements. We also launched new resources on topics such as maternal vaccinations in pregnancy and haemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn. Now in its third year, RCOG Learning has over 28,000 visitors and a learner satisfaction rating of 6.06 out of 7.

Championing digital learning for all

We supported 64 trusted external organisations and individuals to run franchise courses in person, in the UK and worldwide, reaching a further 894 clinicians. Franchise courses are College branded courses that can be run locally.

This is helping more O&G professionals to benefit from our high-quality training. It helps us develop strong regional partnerships and deliver quality education worldwide.

Our ongoing webinar programme continued to keep O&G professionals up to date on key topics. During April and May, over 16,000 people registered to watch our webinar ‘Prediction and Prevention of Pre-eclampsia’ – the most popular event in College history. Average registrations for our free webinar programme reached 3,833 in 2025, a 159% increase compared to 2024.

We launched new online refresher training modules for examiners, including modules on unconscious bias and differential attainment. These are equipping examiners with up-to-date training to maintain consistency, fairness, and inclusivity when they examine the MRCOG Part 3. The online format of the modules is allowing examiners worldwide to complete the training.

Our Green-top Guidelines provide clinicians with recommendations to help them make decisions about appropriate treatment for specific conditions. We carried out research with UK and international members and redesigned the Green-top Guideline webpages with a new clinical categorisation approach to make it easier to access and navigate. This work increased page views by 8% and boosted engagement with the content by 61%.

This year, we provided members with the knowledge to better treat women and girls affected by birth trauma, hirsutism (excessive hair growth) and heavy menstrual bleeding. We did this by redeveloping eight CPD resources to make them more engaging for members. They now include audio, video and interactive elements, as well as tasks for members to reflect on their learning. The resources cover topics that clinicians will encounter in practice.

Promoting careers in O&G

Medical students and foundation doctors received information about specialising in O&G at a virtual careers day that we hosted in May 2025. The event was for SAS doctors, LED and doctors moving to live and work in the UK. The aim was to help doctors make important decisions about their careers. Over 400 delegates registered and the content was made available for those not able to join on the day.

Our dedicated hub for International Medical Graduates (IMGs) helps them settle into UK practice. This is a section of our website designed for IMGs exploring their career options in O&G in the UK. We reviewed and updated web links in the hub to make sure people can find information easily and promoted the content in our Supporting our Doctors portfolio.

In October 2025, we supported the annual SAS Week to promote the roles of SAS doctors and LED.  We published content on our website to raise awareness of the different roles and encourage more people to train in O&G.

Securing our finances, reducing our carbon footprint

Our impact highlights

Delivering low carbon, equitable care  

Multidisciplinary teams from our Green Maternity Challenge presented their work and shared their successes and challenges with more than 100 delegates at a conference in March.

The Green Maternity Challenge ended in 2025. As part of the initiative, nine multidisciplinary teams across the UK received training and mentoring to develop, deliver and measure the impact of carbon cutting initiatives in maternity care within their trusts.

We shared eight evidence-based recommendations to help maternity teams and leaders reduce carbon emissions in maternity care while improving safety, experience, and equity for women, birthing people and their families.

Recommendations in The Green Maternity Report include: streamlining outpatient care; reducing travel; minimising waste during labour and birth; and making sure women receive the right care first time to improve outcomes and sustainability. The report was developed from insights and learning from the Green Maternity Challenge.

Reducing our carbon footprint

The College, as an organisation, continued to work on limiting contributions to the climate and ecological crisis. This year, we:

• Made changes to our Union Street office so that our energy consumption is environmentally sustainable, with electricity powered by green energy.
• Continued to benefit from our 108 solar panels.
• Installed three ‘farmstands’ which grow herbs and salads for staff and tenants who also received accompanying recipe suggestions. This reduced our need for fresh deliveries and added to the plants which thrive in our cafe area.

We engaged 3,657 delegates through a blended model of 20 in-person, 23 virtual, and 5 hybrid educational courses and events. With 66% of participants attending virtually, we maximised accessibility while reducing travel-related carbon emissions for our events as well as overall costs, contributing to a smaller organisational carbon footprint.

Working collaboratively, inclusively and sustainably to improve care  

We are working with other women’s health organisations and like-minded local organisations to transform women’s health and reproductive care. We now share our head office with 16 women’s health organisations, with two joining in 2025.

This makes collaboration easier, especially as, this year, we released meeting rooms and break-out facilities for our tenants, helping to manage costs for their organisations.

We earned a second consecutive Silver Talent Inclusion and Diversity Evaluation (TIDE) award from the Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion. TIDE measures how well an organisation is cultivating a positive and inclusive culture across different categories. The College’s score increased from 74% in 2024 to 76%. This puts us in the top third of participating organisations and the top 20% of charities.

We completed key actions under our 2021–2025 Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) action plan, making the College a more inclusive and representative place to work. This included:

• Delivering EDI and wellbeing events to build understanding of diversity; strengthening mental health support through Mental Health First Aiders and mindfulness training.
• Launching inclusion passports to support staff with disabilities.
• Introducing mandatory active bystander training alongside a revised anti-bullying and harassment policy.
• Taking part in Leonard Cheshire’s Change 100 scheme to support disabled students and graduates.
• Achieving Disability Confident Employer status, recognising our progress in improving accessibility.
• Preparing a diversity profile of our workforce to be published in early 2026. This contains key demographic characteristics, like ethnicity and disability. Creating the profile will allow us to monitor the diversity of our workforce to make sure it reflects our members and the women and girls they serve.

We developed a new organisational strategy that will shape our work from 2025 to 2030. This period of time will mark a defining chapter for the College as we approach our centenary and reaffirm our commitment to advancing the health and rights of women and girls worldwide.