The Role of External Advisers

Specialty Training: The Role of External Advisers

Accessing external advice is an important and compulsory element of the quality management of specialty training required by the GMC. The role of the external adviser is to provide impartial advice and scrutiny of all processes of delivery, assessment and evaluation of a specialty including General Practice (GP) training, according to the GMC Quality Framework (QF).External advice may be provided via medical or lay input. Both are legitimate sources of external advice, depending on the area for advice and/or scrutiny, and neither are optional. Lay advisers may consider processes in detail. The Royal Colleges and, in some cases regarding sub-specialties, the specialty associations, are the key source of external advice for specialty training. 

Written reports must be produced by all external advisers – lay and specialist – to share with the Postgraduate Dean. Reports should also be copied to the training lead at the relevant Royal College. It may be useful if one individual has external adviser responsibility for a specific deanery or geographical area in order to develop a body of knowledge. However this mustbe balanced against the time commitment necessary to fully engage with deanery mechanisms and involve appropriate distance between the adviser and the local systems. 

• The specialty programme must provide the external adviser with any background information relevant to the activity being undertaken, facilitate and support the external advisers so that they can meet the requirements of their role.
• Specialty schools and LEPs must have consistent processes in place for sharing information across external advisers to ensure the individual acting in that capacity is adequately informed.
• Each specialty school and LEP will have its own systems for organising their external advisers, and should work with the appropriate mechanisms for identifying these individuals.
• External advisers must be used for core programmes as well as higher specialty programmes, and will have the same role in the processes as described below for all postgraduate training.
• External advisers should direct written reports to both the Postgraduate Dean and the relevant Royal College. External advice may be given to individual trainees, for example as part of the penultimate year assessment, but reports on this advice should be provided to the Dean.
• The Postgraduate Dean should feed back to the Royal College with concerns or positive feedback relating to any external advice they receive. The Postgraduate Dean may wish to seek external advice regarding an appeal or a complaint.
• External advisers mustdeclare any conflict of interest during any activity.
• External advisers should not act as ‘assessors’ of training.
• External advisers should not use their position to negatively influence or undermine deanery processes in an open forum and should aim to avoid providing conflicting advice to deanery committees without first consulting the Postgraduate Dean.
• STCs are not normally expected to have external advisers present.
• External advice is not automatically accepted by the recipients.