Enhanced monitoring at Kent and Canterbury Hospital

GMC comment on the removal of doctors in training from the urgent care centre.

Charlie Massey, Chief Executive of the General Medical Council, said:

‘With Health Education England we made an urgent inspection of East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust earlier this month and found the quality of education and training received by doctors in the Urgent Care Centre to be seriously below the standards that we require.

‘Not only do the poor levels of clinical supervision that we saw make this an unsafe and unsupportive environment for doctors in training but we are also very concerned about the potential impact on patient safety.

‘East Kent has been subject to enhanced monitoring since April 2014 following concerns raised with us by doctors in training in our national survey. The trust has had ample time to improve training standards for doctors but has not done so.

‘We fully support HEE’s decision to move doctors in training from the Urgent Care Centre to other sites across the trust. We will continue to work closely with them and NHS Improvement to help make sure the doctors affected get all the support they need and the disruption to patients is kept to a minimum.

'If we can be confident the issues HEE have identified are resolved in a sustainable way, there is no reason why doctors in training cannot be returned to the unit.'