The General Medical Council inspects each UK medical school in what is known as the QABME (Quality Assurance of Basic Medical Education) cycle. The result of this decides on whether or not a medical school is allowed to remain awarding medical degrees, so it is something they tend to take quite seriously. They are measured against the standards set in Tomorrow’s Doctors, the guide to undergraduate education produced by the GMC. This information is in the public domain and can be found here.
The GMC visits each medical school twice every ten years, the stages of the visit are:
- Collecting information (June to December)
- Confirming information (January to July)
- Integrating information and making judgements (June to August)
Every year, each medical school must provide a return to the GMC that:a. Identifies significant changes to curricula, assessments or staffing.b. Highlights risks or issues of concern, proposed solutions and corrective actions taken.c. Identifies examples of innovation and good practice.d. Responds to issues of interest and debate in medical education, including promoting equality and valuing diversity.e. Identifies progress on any requirements or recommendations arising from the QABME visit process.The GMC writes to each medical school towards the end of the calendar year to request the specific information required that year. School returns allow the GMC Education Committee to identify:a. Issues to explore with all medical schools.b. Examples of good practice that can be shared.c. Issues to be investigated with individual medical schools.
Respective medical schools fill in tables under the columns:
- Tomorrow’s Doctors area
- Requirement/ Recommendation/ Change/ Innovation/ Risk or challenge
- Action
- Contact
- Supporting documents list
- Timeline including a deadline for actions to be carried out
This will be the first year after the new edition of Tomorrow’s Doctors, so some of the goalposts have moved. The 2008 report for Birmingham reports that the increase of SSCs from 12-13% to 25-33% has just been achieved. The new edition specifies this is no longer necessary. At least there will be some leeway for changes that have been made. The fact that medical schools are being measured against specific criteria produced by the GMC means that these reports are more meaningful that any league tables produced by broadsheet newspapers. This is the best place to look to find out how well a medical school is performing.
- Dom
