Blog: The Quality Assurance Framework for Education & Training
The Medical Council regulates medical doctors in Ireland. The Council's purpose is to protect the public by promoting and better ensuring high standards of professional conduct and professional education, training and competence among doctors. Our vision statement is "
Working in partnership to drive quality across the continuum of medical education and training, fostering leadership and high standards among doctors for excellent patient outcomes ."
The Medical Council’s Education and Training Directorate are implementing a transformational change programme to develop a new Quality Assurance Framework for medical education and training. This new framework is in line with the principles of right-touch regulation, which means looking at the level of risk to the public and identifying the most proportionate means to respond or manage that risk.
A series of stakeholder consultation events were held in 2021, looking at how we can improve our approach to quality assurance. Feedback from these consultations informed the content of the change programme, initiated by the Medical Council, with key areas of focus being:
A phased approach to development has been applied, given the scale of change that is involved including:
The new framework will see a greater degree of collaboration and alignment with stakeholders. A right-touch approach to regulation will see a less burdensome process for all involved across the quality continuum and greater success in terms of our impact.
Quality Assurance Framework requirements
The framework is reliant on three core aspects to work successfully:
Collaboration – enables the framework in practice.
Quality Assurance Model – how standards are assessed and monitored.
Proportionate regulatory intervention – how we respond and act on findings.
Benefits of the Quality Assurance Framework
The quality assurance framework provides a modern platform for effective regulation of medical education and training bringing many benefits to stakeholders, internal and external, including: