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Standards, guidance and curricula
From medical school to postgraduate education, we set the standards and expected outcomes for medical education and training in the UK. We regulate all stages of doctors' professional development, including training for qualified doctors who want to specialise.
How we quality assure
We’re responsible for assuring the quality of education and training. Our quality assurance framework is how we check the use of our standards and guidance.
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Standards and outcomes
We set the standards expected of medical training organisations. We also set the outcomes students and doctors in training should achieve. Our five publications set out in detail what these standards and outcomes are.
Promoting excellence
This document sets out the standards for the delivery of medical education and training. These standards have patient safety, quality of care, and fairness at their heart.
Excellence by design
Excellence by design sets out the requirements for curricula. Royal colleges and faculties follow these when developing, or amending curricula.
Generic professional capabilities framework
Training in skills like communication, leadership and patient safety is vital to patient care. This framework explains how these skills can be included in postgraduate curricula.
Outcomes for graduates
Medical students must meet the necessary standards to apply for provisional registration. The knowledge and skills needed are set out in Outcomes for graduates.
Outcomes for provisionally registered doctors with a licence to practise
Before applying for full registration, provisionally registered doctors must meet a high standard. This document sets out the outcomes expected of them.
Guidance
To help you apply our standards in practice we produce guidance. This guidance outlines how our standards and outcomes can be met and looks at over a dozen areas in more detail.
Achieving good medical practice
This guidance outlines the standards expected of medical students – both inside and outside medical school. It references our ethical guidance Good medical practice.
Continuing professional development (CPD)
Doctors must keep their knowledge and skills up to date throughout their working life and maintain and improve their performance. Continuing professional development is a key way to meet these professional standards.
Designing and maintaining postgraduate assessment programmes
This guidance is supplementary to our curriculum standards, Excellence by design, and gives advice for those making decisions about how programmes of assessment are designed and maintained.
Equality and diversity guidance for curricula and assessment systems
This guide is for medical royal colleges and faculties. It explains the principles for the equality and diversity evidence we need to approve changes to curricula, examinations and assessment systems.
Gateways to the professions
Gateways to the professions provides suggestions to medical schools on ways to make courses more accessible to students with disabilities. The guidance does not lay down new requirements, quality assurance standards or ‘policies’ from us or any of the other organisations involved.
Position statements
Sometimes we are asked for help in interpreting our guidance. Our section on position statements looks at areas where we've been asked to provide more help. The latest five statements are listed below.
Guidance on UK medical education delivered outside the UK
This guidance outlines our expectations of medical schools that want to provide UK medical education outside the UK.
First, do no harm
This statement is about how the safety of patients is at the core of our new standards for education and training. This includes the expectation that training should take place in an open and honest learning culture.
Time out of training
Guidance to postgraduate deaneries, medical royal colleges/faculties and trainees on the management of absences from training and their effect on a trainee’s certificate of completion of training (CCT) date.
Less than full time training
This statement sets conditions for training for doctors who are working towards a certificate of completion of training.
Requirements for gaining competence in cardiopulmonary resuscitation
Our position on cardiopulmonary resuscitation in relation to medical education and training. We explain the flexibility in the outcomes expected of medical students and doctors.
Medical education projects
Medicine never stops changing and improving, so education and training must keep up. Our projects tackle any subject which may impact on education now and in the future. The latest five projects we've been working on are listed below.
Medical Licensing Assessment
Find out about our plans to establish a Medical Licensing Assessment to ensure doctors joining the medical register with a licence to practise meet a common threshold for safe practice.
Differential attainment
Differential attainment is what we call the gap between attainment levels of different groups of doctors. It's an indicator that training and medical education may not be fair. Find out more about the work we are doing about this.
Health and disability review
The journey through medical education and training systems is not always an easy one. And it can be even harder if you have a disability.
Reviewing the Outcomes for graduates
We recently consulted on revisions to our Outcomes for graduates which set out what newly qualified doctors from UK medical schools must know and be able to do.
Credentialing
We are considering a new process called credentialing to recognise doctors’ capabilities in particular practice areas. The main purpose of this new framework will be to protect patients and make sure that future healthcare developments are safe and effective.
