Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance of medical education is a complex but essential function – but through our partnerships, we aim to demystify the process and assist our partners to succeed. Within any medical school effective quality assurance will:  

• underpin continuous improvement 
• optimise the student experience 
• provides evidence that your school is meeting the requirements of your regulator.  

When Quality Assurance is optimised, it becomes a strategic tool that enables medical schools to go beyond regulatory requirements and pursue excellence.  Our frameworks aim to provide our partners with timely, accurate and actionable intelligence which provides medical school governing boards with the opportunity to develop early foresight of emerging issues, with time to plan and implement solutions. This is critical given the time lag between curriculum decisions and understanding the impact on graduate outcomes.  

There are considerable educational and organisational benefits to optimising quality assurance which go beyond performative measurements. These include significant increases in national and global measures of student satisfaction (such as the National Student Survey in the UK) and supporting curriculum review and transformation.  

Through the Educational Partnerships Office, the Imperial Faculty of Medicine has global experience of optimised quality assurance in high performing medical schools. Our combination of new and existing medical school experience can provide unique insights, tailored to specific regulatory requirements. We can work with you in the following areas, whether this is part of a new school project or an existing school wishing to explore opportunities for growth and optimisation:  

• Navigate new or updated regulatory pathways and transformation to enable the school to evolve effectively and efficiently, including integration with your institutional governance structures. 
• Clinical Partnership ecosystem design and integration within your institution. 
• Provide technical expertise and operational support for quality assurance framework review and development which are aligned with medical education regulations in addition to institutional and sector requirements. 
• Review your quality assurance of the clinical learning environment to ensure that your systems are geared towards early identification of challenging placements and workforce needs. 
• Act as a critical friend in advising on policy changes, identifying areas of good practice and how to enhance quality assurance of your MBBS programme to move beyond regulatory compliance. 

If your institution is ready to adopt quality assurance as a strategic lever which can support transformative curriculum development and optimise your students experience, we’re ready to help. Contact the Education Partnerships Office to begin a tailored, strategic conversation.