Developing an educational curriculum in primary care with practitioner and manager involvement: the governance shackle.

This article describes what happened when we attempted to set up an educational development project to design a syllabus and implementation strategy for GP education in England. Grounded in good practice our approach involved consultations with a range of relevant professionals. Because we adopted a rigorous approach to the definition of our plans and to the recording of data collected we attracted research ethics and research governance attention. The governance processes involved were cumbersome. Requirements were inconsistent and there was also much replication. Considerable resources were consumed. We question some of the implications of our experience for educational development projects in terms of quality assurance, resources and professional inclusivity.