Undergraduate Quality Review Panel

NES supports engagement of medical school programmes in a Scotland-wide review of quality management data relating to the quality of undergraduate medical clinical placements in Health Boards, within hospitals and primary care; this review is referred to as the Undergraduate Quality Review Panel (UG-QRP).

The UG-QRP supports a link between the stewardship by NES of the Medical ACT budget and the quality of undergraduate medical education that is delivered. This also enables oversight of the quality of medical education in the context of both undergraduate training and postgraduate medical education and training, both of which are subject to the same standards (GMC—Promoting Excellence) and tend to be delivered in the same training environments; the output of the UG-QRP feeds into the postgraduate QRP system.

The aim is to share data (including from the student survey), information and intelligence relating to the quality of undergraduate medical education training in all undergraduate medical placements in Scotland, to confirm whether GMC standards are being met, and to identify posts where that might not be the case, and to discuss what action has been taken or ought to be taken in response. An additional aim is to identify and acknowledge those posts that are delivering high quality of undergraduate medical education. As many undergraduate training environments hosts students from more than one undergraduate medical programme there is an opportunity to ensure consistency of undergraduate experience across programmes.

The QRP provides the first opportunity, at the beginning of each new training year, for all Schools of Medicine (with representatives from Heads of Teaching (HoTs), Medical ACT Officers, Directors of Medical Education (DMEs), NES Medical ACT Team and Undergraduate school representatives to meet to consider all the quality data, information and intelligence relating to all placements across all local education provider’s (LEP) and GP Surgery’s, that have been compiled across the previous 12 months.  The aim is to identify those placements where there are:

1. Potential signals of good practice.
2. Potential signals suggesting poor practice in training (where GMC standards may not be met).
3. Where further information may be required to inform understanding around the quality of training.

The 2021 QRP was held virtually on 24^th August 2021 and was attended by representatives from all NES and all Scottish Medical Schools, with GMC colleagues shadowing on the day as a fact-finding exercise. Following the QRP 81 letters of commendation were sent by NES at the recommendation of the panel. As an iterative process the group requested feedback following the QRP to try and improve the process for following years.