As you will know all trainees are required to undertake an annual training survey via the General Medical Council (GMC) to give feedback on your current placement.
We are very grateful for this feedback and it is invaluable to us in relation to monitoring training standards.
Full details about this year’s survey and results of past surveys can be found on the GMC’s website.
When will the survey be launched?
The GMC will launch this year’s survey on Tuesday 19 March 2024. The survey will be open for six weeks, and will close on Thursday 2 May 2024. The principle aim is to measure your perception of the quality of training you receive.
How will trainees be contacted?
Trainees will need to log in to their GMC Online account.
The trainee survey can then be accessed by clicking on the ‘My Surveys’ tab. The first page of the survey form will be pre-populated with the trainee’s post details and trainees will only need to confirm if they are correct or amend if necessary.
Which trainees are required to complete the survey?
The survey is relevant to Foundation, Core and Higher Specialty trainees including specialty registrar (SpR) and GP trainees. The only exceptions to this are SpRs/StRs who have been awarded their CCT but are awaiting a consultant post, dentists, non-medical Public Health trainees. Doctors who are not in training posts e.g locum appointment for service (LAS) and trust grade doctors, Medical Training Initiative (MTI) trainees. Trainee populations who will not be surveyed but information will be collected about are trainees who are on maternity leave as at 19 March 2024 or are out of programme trainees (OOPT) outside of the UK, out of programme research (OOPR), out of programme clinical experience (OOPE), or out of programme career break.
How will meaningful results be obtained?
Prior to the launch of the survey we will be working with specialties and locations to heighten awareness. During the survey, the Quality Unit will be monitoring the response rate and circulating details of non respondents to specialty leads and Postgraduate Centres. Any queries regarding the survey should be directed to HEIW trainee survey.
When will the results be available?
The GMC has advised that the results will be publicly available in summer 2024 (final date TBC). HEIW will circulate further information regarding the results as it becomes available.
Your views
If you have any suggestions on how we can work together to improve our response rate or have any other queries about the survey, please do not hesitate to contact us. This is a rare opportunity to influence training by giving the GMC your views on the standard of medical education and training within Wales. Responses will be treated as CONFIDENTIAL and reported ANONYMOUSLY.
More Information
If you would like to find out more information on the forthcoming survey please contact:
Once the survey results are in the Quality Unit carries out a series of scrutiny meetings to consider these. During these the survey results, free text comments and current risk logs are triangulated and any new risk areas are identified. Risk logs are updated and shared with local education providers who are asked to review all areas of concern.
Local education providers are sent a letter highlighting any urgent areas of concern and also areas that have received particularly positive results so that good practice may be shared with others.
The targeted process is used to help improve training concerns across Wales by working with local education providers to develop action plans in order to improve areas of concern. You can find out more about the targeted process.
Where a targeted visit takes place for a particular specialty and location both trainees and trainers will be invited to attend the meeting and have a chance to raise any concerns and give their honest feedback.
You can find out about how we have used trainee feedback from the surveys to improve the training experience through some short case studies which you can find through the link below:
https://heiw.nhs.wales/support/quality-management/general-medical-council-surveys/case-studies/
Comments you provide in the free text field relating to patient safety or bullying and undermining concerns you have are provided to us by the GMC as they come in, while the survey is still open, in an anonymous format. They are all fully investigated between ourselves and the local education providers and responses, with actions undertaken to resolve concerns, are then submitted to the GMC.
Free text comments are taken very seriously and where issues are not quickly resolved concerns will be monitored via the risk log and managed fully in line with the risk process. Concerns raised in this way are also triangulated with other evidence and comments from previous years to ensure that concerns are fully investigated and resolved.