Regulation of Health and Social Care Professionals Consultation

PART 6
EDUCATION, CONDUCT AND PRACTICE
6.1 One of the key functions of the regulators is to ensure proper standards of
practice throughout a professional’s career. To achieve this, the regulators
oversee the quality of pre-registration and post-registration education and training
in order to equip students with the skills and knowledge they need for practice.
They also issue guidance such as codes of conduct, standards of proficiency and
ethical guidelines which set out the values and principles on which good practice
is founded. In addition, the regulators require registrants to keep their knowledge
and skills up to date throughout their working life and to maintain and improve
their performance.
6.2 This Part considers how the new statute should enable the regulators to carry out
these roles. It is divided into the following:
(1) overlapping responsibilities;
(2) education;
(3) guidance; and
(4) ongoing standards of practice.
OVERLAPPING RESPONSIBILITIES
6.3 The regulator is only one player in the complex fields of ensuring proper
standards of professional education, conduct and practice. Furthermore, health
and social care education and clinical standards are to a significant degree
devolved matters, which adds a further level of complexity.
6.4 In education and training, there is considerable overlap between the functions of
the regulators in setting standards and the roles undertaken by other bodies. For
example, the education of health and social care professionals will fall often
within the sphere of higher education and the auditing and inspections regimes
that apply. These regimes in England include those maintained by the Higher
Education Funding Council for England, Quality Assurance Agency, Office for
Fair Access and Office of the Independent Adjudicator. These external quality
assurance activities are in addition to higher education institutions’ own internal
quality assurance processes.
6.5 There are also a number of different bodies with varying degrees of responsibility
for education and training provision, including universities and other education
institutions (such as medical and dental schools), Royal Colleges and other
representative bodies, local authorities, Skills Sector Councils (such as Skills for
Health), Medical Education England, NHS Education for Scotland, Wales
Deanery and the Northern Ireland Medical and Dental Training Agency. This
degree of overlap requires significant coordination between the various bodies.
For example, at the General Medical Council this is achieved through a three tier
quality assurance model: the General Medical Council sets the standards,
requirements and outcomes for medical education and training, the medical
schools and deaneries provide the Council with evidence that the standards are
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