Quality Assurance

In our first year of operation, the Managed Educational Network began to establish a process for defining key quality standards for clinical skills education, and to establish a quality assurance process for clinical skills educational resources. Over the three years of the CS MEN we are developing/collating common educational resources for agreed core clinical skills, are mapping current approaches to using simulation in delivering core clinical skills training, and in conjunction with Skills for Health in Scotland, are mapping clinical skills training to appropriate national qualification frameworks.

In 2009 we piloted a self-assessment questionnaire to be used for Quality Assurance of educational programmes (available to download or from the CS MEN Office), and also a one-page questionnaire for use with individual skills sessions where simulation is used (also available to download or from the CS MEN Office). Over the course of 2010 the one-page questionnaire is being rolled out for adoption by all Health Boards, starting with NHS Grampian, NHS Lothian and NHS GGC.

More about Quality Assurance

The common quality standards, educational resources and training programmes developed and delivered through the Scottish Clinical Skills Strategy are subject to an independent, robust and open quality assurance process. This will give the public and health service managers confidence in the quality of clinical skills education and delivery and enable the skills training to be explicitly linked with UK and Scottish competency frameworks.

Clinical skills training impacts directly on the quality of care patients receive. Consequently, the quality assurance process must encompass not only educational governance but clinical and staff governance issues as well. In Scotland, QIS is responsible for promoting patient safety through ensuring clinical standards of care. This is achieved through the setting of standards and performance assessment of how these are delivered in the workplace. NHS QIS is committed to working collaboratively on the development of the Managed Educational Network as we seek to promote best practice and improve the quality of healthcare.

NES has responsibility for providing and promoting education to all NHS staff and has developed an educational governance framework for ensuring that educational resources and processes can be measured against explicit quality standards and criteria.

Competency frameworks

All clinical skills education delivered through the national strategy shall be referenced to UK and Scottish competency frameworks. This will ensure transferability of the skills achieved by staff moving between different healthcare settings in the UK as well as formal recognition of the training as contributing to the professional development of staff completing specific skills training programmes.

Skills for Health are developing National Occupational Standards and National Workforce Competencies for use in the health sector on a UK basis. These competency frameworks define the performance outcome that should be delivered by a skilled practitioner and are linked to National Service Frameworks and the Knowledge and Skills Framework as part of Agenda for Change. Skills for Health in Scotland have been a key stakeholder in developing the clinical skills strategy and have agreed to provide a project worker to map educational resources for delivering skills training against their national standards and the proposed Scottish career framework. This will enable staff to include recognised skills training into their personal and professional development through Agenda for Change.

For more information on this project please contact Jeanette Stevenson, Educational Projects Manager on 01382 740220, or by email j.k.z.stevenson@dundee.ac.uk