LABs and LFGs

Setting Standards: LABs and LFGs

The work of Local Academic Boards (LABs) is central to GEAR. KSS Deanery has established a local academic board in each LEP. LABs fulfil the educational governance function of postgraduate medical education for LEPs in the KSS Deanery region. They undertake the quality control of postgraduate medical education and training programmes in order to ensure patient safety. LABs monitor and oversee the quality of training programmes provided within specialties by Local Faculty Groups (LFGs). They are the centralised conduit of communication, about PGME and training, between NHS Acute or Community-based LEPs, KSS Deanery and its Foundation/specialty schools, including mandated relationships with neighbouring deaneries. Within their LEP, they are the locus both for quality control of PGME and for Local Foundation/specialty faculty development and quality enhancement. As such they would expect to receive and consider the implications of the annual KSS Deanery specialty school reports.

LABs meet formally three times a year. They receive and consider audit and review and other regular reports on programmes of PGME from LFGs. They audit, accept them and offer advice before forwarding them to the schools and Deanery. They have the authority to require changes in the local delivery of programmes of PGME in line with PMETB-published Generic Standards for training (Sept 2009) and appropriate PMETB Standards for curricula and assessment systems (July 2008). They may initiate LEP internal reviews of programmes of PGME and may set up and monitor quality enhancement projects, establishing sub-committees and steering groups as appropriate.

LABs host and manage quality assurance and management visits to the LEPs, most notably annual KSS Deanery Contract Reviews, specialty quality visits, monitoring visits on behalf of the GMC as required and as part of the Care Quality Commission’s Annual Health Check. The LAB’s role is to monitor, oversee and be responsible for all general issues of educational governance related to PGME in the LEP. The detailed domains, membership, procedures and remit of a LAB’s work is contained in GEAR.

Each LEP must establish and maintain a LFG for each of its main specialties involved in the training of Foundation programme or specialty doctors. LFGs exercise quality control over a foundation/specialty programme. Their principal responsibility is to ensure that LEPs provide high-quality PGME, for KSS Deanery’s postgraduate doctors, by maintaining standards for curriculum management, that is, the systems and processes through which learning programmes, teaching, assessment and awards are developed, implemented and evaluated. LFGs also maintain the leadership, management and administrative systems and processes that underpin and provide high-quality learning environments. LFGs must comply with:

• the approved curriculum requirements of the relevant Royal College
•  the GMC’s ‘Good Medical Practice
•   the PMETB publications Generic standards for training and Standards for curricula and assessment systems, foundation and specialty schools’ policies, regulations and governance and, where appropriate,
•  the NHSLA Risk Management Standards for Acute Trusts, CQC, Primary Care Trusts and Independent Sector Providers of NHS Care.

 The detailed domains, membership, procedures and remit of a LFG’s work are contained in GEAR.