Quality Management in Medical Foundation Training: Lessons for Pharmacy

Background: This work forms part of a review of pharmacy education and training being undertaken by the pharmacy regulator in the U.K. Aim: To gather and review information and experiences from medical Foundation training and to consider relevance and applicability to quality management in the Pharmacy Pre-registration Scheme. Methods: Document analysis and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders at regional and national levels. Results: Nine interviews were conducted. The medical model is based upon three levels: quality assurance undertaken by the regulators, quality management undertaken at a regional level by Deaneries, and quality control undertaken by the local education provider. The medical regulators define the standards that foundation training programmes are expected to meet and have developed a process based on inspection visits to the deaneries to verify that standards are being met. Deaneries have some flexibility in designing their quality management systems. Conclusion: The review of medical Foundation training identified some tools of quality management. Triangulation of data from several methods in the medical Foundation programme includes site visits, self-assessment and trainee and trainer feedback. These principles are worthy of debate and consideration for future quality management of the Pharmacy Pre-registration Scheme.