Quality Scrutiny Board
The Quality Scrutiny Board (QSB) is the mechanism by which Health Education East Midlands (HEEM) focuses on the work of Specialty Schools to identify areas of ‘good practice’ and ‘areas of risk’, that have the potential to impact on the delivery and quality of medical education and ultimately, the quality and safety of patient care. The purpose of the Quality Scrutiny Board is to challenge and support the Specialty Schools in their endeavours to develop high quality medical education and to promote good practice throughout the region.
This is the third year of the Quality Scrutiny Board’s cycle and on-going reflection has enabled the Board to develop changes to its processes and procedures. The continued cycle of evolution of the Quality Scrutiny process has led to increased engagement from the Specialty Schools who have found the activity to be thought provoking and non-confrontational.
The members of the Board have been selected to reflect consumers of the outcomes of the training process, namely the trainee doctor and patients. The increase in senior educator input to the Board has supported other members of the Board and enabled a more probing line of questioning during the Quality Scrutiny Board sittings.
The purpose of medical education is to provide high quality patient care, the lay representative on the Board, through their experience, are able to consider the initiatives undertaken by the Schools and question how education impacts on the delivery of high quality patient care. HEEM, through the use of public and patient involvement at this level of ‘quality scrutiny’ is endeavouring to link the quality of patient care directly to the delivery of high quality education.
Each Specialty School was asked to complete an Annual Quality Assurance Assessment. The Quality Scrutiny Board requested that these were completed by 10th September 2014. The QSB would like to thank those Schools who provided the documentation on time. Appendix 1 of this document details the timeline against which the reports were received. The Quality Assurance documents were looked at by all members of the Board. Two members of the Board were assigned to each School to look at their documentation in depth and to develop the question set for the individual Quality Scrutiny Board sittings. The question sets developed by Board members were confirmed and challenged at a meeting of the whole Board on 1st October 2014. This year each School was asked to deliver a 15 minute presentation on a topic specific to that School and their Quality Assurance documentation.
At the conclusion of each panel sitting a discussion was undertaken that formed the basis of the report for each School, highlighting areas of ‘good practice’ and ‘areas of risk’.
The purpose of the QSB process is that of challenge and support. As a Board we wish to invite the Specialty Schools to share areas of good practice that we have highlighted to them and to work on the areas of risk. The Board recognise that to make this an effective process, support around particular areas of risk is required from HEEM. These areas of risk have already been highlighted to the appropriate personnel within HEEM.
For further information please contact Jill Guild CMrg CMI at jill.guild@nhs.net for further information
