Centre Review

Centre Review is an annual KSS Deanery process that aims both to audit and to develop NHS Trusts’ capacity for educational management. Every year, each Education Centre in KSS produces:

  • a Quality Manual, showing how the Centre complies with all national and regional statutory and regulatory requirements, including those of the Deanery, the STA, the JCPTGP, the Royal Colleges and the SAC 
  • an Education Strategy, showing how the Centre proposes to develop in order to meet the changing needs of the NHS. It includes: information about the background, strategic purposes and organisation of the Centre and the NHS Trust; a review of the previous year’s Education Action Plan; and planning information in specified key areas 
  • an Action Plan, which arises out of discussion of the Quality Manual and the Education Strategy between the NHS Trust Chief Executive, the Clinical Tutor, the Medical Education Manager and the Deanery Annual Process In the KSS approach to Centre Review, we make a clear distinction between quality control and quality as change. Quality control, along the lines of mainstream quality assurance approaches such as BS5750, is expressed through the Quality Manual, whereas quality understood as responsiveness to change is expressed through the Education Strategy. This distinction is helpful in supporting new developments first through an innovation and implementation stage (via the Education Strategy) and then into usual custom and practice (via the Quality Manual). Our purposes are to support local creativity and diversity within national and regional guidelines, and accordingly this is a developmental inspection, rather than a grading and ranking inspection. We also use a particular, highly participative process for developing the regional specifications for the Quality Manual and the Education Strategy.
  1. The first draft of the specifications is produced by the Dean Director and Education Adviser, and then taken separately to Deanery senior managers and to Medical Education Managers and Clinical Tutors for feedback.
  2. A series of drafts is then produced successively, by a Working Group which is open to membership by all Deanery senior managers, Clinical Tutors and Medical Education Managers.
  3. The final draft is taken to a regional launch and after any further corrections or modifications have been made, the new Specifications are circulated and form the basis for that year’s exercise.

Each year, that three-month period of participative development is repeated to produce new documentation. A major benefit that we find from this process is a very smooth implementation of the cycle of visits and inspections, since participation in its development produces a high degree of confidence and personal investment in it, by Medical Education Managers and Clinical Tutors.

Centre Review Visits

Each Centre is visited twice each year. The first visit is carried out by a pair of trained Verifiers, to verify and sign-off the Centre’s Quality Manual. The second visit, a fortnight later, is a formal meeting between the NHS Trust Chief Executive, Clinical Tutor and Medical Education Manager, and a Dean and a Deanery Education Adviser (plus any other NHS Trust staff the Chief Executive wishes to invite, such as the Medical Director or Finance Director). That meeting discusses: the results of the Quality Manual verification visit; the results of the previous year’s Action Plan; and the Education Strategy for PGMDE that has been prepared by the NHS Trust. At the end of the meeting a draft Action Plan is agreed for the forthcoming year. The participants at the meeting then have a week in which to make any additions, changes or revisions to the draft Action Plan after which it is attached to the Education Contract (downloadable below). Formal signing of the Education Contract takes place at the end of the Deanery’s annual Centre Review process by the Dean Director and the Chief Executive of the NHS Trust.

Quality Manual Specification

This is the Quality Manual Specification produced as part of KSS Deanery’s processes for Educational Governance, in 2006. The full Specification was produced by the Deanery Working Group, comprising the Dean Director, Regional Education Adviser, Medical Education Managers and Clinical Tutors. The Working Group operates through a particular set of participative management processes, and its members wish to emphasise that the processes through which it operates are crucial to the successful implementation of its work. Our commitment, is to share our ways of working with anyone who wishes to implement a similar system to ours, or who wishes to explore how and why we have developed it in this way. We are happy to do this through discussion and professional conversation, and are pleased to invite visitors to KSS Deanery for that purpose.

Education Strategy

This is the Education Strategy Specification produced as part of KSS Deanery’s processes for Educational Governance, in 2006. The full Specification was produced by the Deanery Working Group, comprising the Dean Director, Regional Education Adviser, Medical Education Managers and Clinical Tutors. The Working Group operates through a particular set of participative management processes, and its members wish to emphasise that the processes through which it operates are crucial to the successful implementation of its work. Our commitment, is to share our ways of working with anyone who wishes to implement a similar system to ours, or who wishes to explore how and why we have developed it in this way. We are happy to do this through discussion and professional conversation, and are pleased to invite visitors to KSS Deanery for that purpose.