Governance and regulation

Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) is committed to ensuring that appropriate governance arrangements are in place to enable the delivery of high quality postgraduate education and training that supports service provision in NHS Wales, now and in the future.

Within HEIW the Quality Unit reports to the Educational, Commissioning and Quality Committee reporting on training concerns on a regular basis.

Enhanced monitoring

The enhanced monitoring process occurs where a serious training concern has shown no improvement via local monitoring processes and intervention and the General Medical Council (GMC) will step in to work with HEIW and the Health Board to improve the quality of training. Concerns that may go into enhanced monitoring are those which might affect patient safety or training progression. Enhanced monitoring is used to encourage local management of concerns and the GMC will request updates more frequently as part of this process. They may also accompany HEIW representatives on a targeted visit to investigate a concern or monitor progress. All cases that are at the enhanced monitoring stage are published publicly on the GMC’s website. In the vast majority of cases HEIW would be aware of such risks and actively refer them to the GMC for intervention and assistance.

Regulation

The Quality Unit reports to the GMC and we are required to regularly update them about any serious or ongoing concerns.

The GMC are responsible for protecting patient safety and supporting medical education and practice across the UK. The GMC sets the standards for medical education and training which we are required to follow and they monitor us via regular review visits and via mechanisms such as their annual training surveys. We are required to turn in regular written reports to the GMC about training concerns as well as areas of good practice. More detailed information about their role can be found on the GMC website.