KSS roles and responsibilities

Specialty training is organised through Postgraduate Schools e.g. Schools of Surgery, Schools of Medicine, Schools of General Practice and so on. They have professional links to Royal Colleges/Specialty Societies and are accountable to the Postgraduate Dean. Information about the Schools can be found in our Training section

These are senior clinician educators who provide strategic leadership for the development of the postgraduate school and are responsible for the overall management of the training programmes in a specialty and its related sub-specialties.   They work closely with the relevant Royal College or Specialty Society. They are supported by one or more Training Programme Directors (see below) and members of the workforce team. They report to the Postgraduate Dean and their deputy.

These are senior clinician educators who are responsible for managing their specific training programme usually across different Local Education Providers. They are responsible for recruitment, rotations and trainee progression and organise the ARCP process. They support the relevant Head of Specialty School and work closely with the workforce team.

These are the healthcare organisations (usually NHS Acute and Mental Health Trusts along with General Practice Placement providers) which provide the necessary environment for General Medical Council (GMC) approved training placements for postgraduate medical trainees.  

Acute and Mental Health Trusts usually have a Director of Medical Education (DME) who is responsible for the profile of medical education, developing the faculty (trainers, supervisors & tutors) and ensuring the delivery of the Education Contract for NHSE WT&E. 

The Medical Education Managers (MEMs) role is a vast one, they are the main link to your Education & Training Placements and specialties. They oversee Foundation, Core, Higher, GP and Undergraduate training placements within each organisation. In brief their roles specialised, are highly skilled and are defined below:

– Provide direction, specialist medical education knowledge, planning and leadership to the PGMDE team and Trust staff

– Day to day management of postgraduate training, trainer support, educational governance, quality assurance, and facilitation of placements and programmes.

– Ensure the implementation and maintenance of robust systems for the delivery, monitoring and evaluation of postgraduate medical training and education

– Support a cohesive approach to quality assurance continues across Postgraduate Education 

– Ensure mechanisms are in place to deliver services, to meet the workforce and development need of all services by clinical skills training, medical education

– Encompasses education from the strategic workforce issues in the Trust

– To deliver regionally the Education Contract and work at a strategic high level within the trust to ensure that the contract is both met and delivered. 

– MEMs oversee trainee rotations to ensure a robust delivery of education and training as well as manage budgets.

The GMC is the independent regulator for doctors in the UK. Its statutory purpose is ‘to protect, promote, and maintain the health and safety of the public’. Its job is to ensure that patients can have confidence in doctors. It does this in the exercise of its four main functions:

– setting standards for entry to the medical register;
– keeping up to date registers of qualified doctors;
– determining the principles and values that underpin good medical practice;
– taking firm but fair action where those standards are not met by doctors.

The GMC sets and secures specific standards for all UK undergraduate medical education. It also has a general function to promote high standards and coordinate all stages of medical education. The GMC holds and maintains the specialist and GP Registers. All doctors wishing to practice medicine in the UK must be registered with the GMC.

GMC requires an annual report by the Postgraduate Dean on behalf of HEE KSS. Much of the report takes the form of a self-assessment against the generic standards for training and the standards for deaneries, highlighting areas for development and notable practice. The annual report also includes an action plan for the coming year. Local Academic Boards (LABs) are expected to produce their own annual reports in the same format as the Postgraduate Dean’s report to GMC, so that issues from around the KSS region can be easily collated. The annual report draws its information from multiple perspectives, including:

– the annual contract review exercise in the region’s NHS trusts;
– annual audit and review reports from each HEE KSS LAB;
– the results of the GMC Annual Surveys (see paragraph below);
– post placements GP trainees’ survey;
– ARCP panel outcomes data;

specific incident reporting that has taken place during the year, including reports from any inspection visits to LEPs, and the action arising from that.

Each year the GMC conducts a national survey of medical trainees. The National Survey of Trainee Doctors provides a picture of what the UK’s trainees think about their training. To find out more, please visit the GMC webpages here.