Education Quality Assurance and Enhancement

1. 1.1 Assurance, control and enhancement7 min
2. 1.2 Purpose and principles6 min
3. 1.3 The quality assurance framework7 min
4. 1.4 Accreditation and peer review7 min

Objectives. Define quality assurance, quality control and quality enhancement in health professions education and distinguish them. State the purposes of educational quality assurance and improvement for patients, professionals and the public. Describe the four components of the ETA quality assurance framework, licence and registration, audit, accreditation, monitoring and follow up. Explain accreditation, its guiding principles, the two types, and peer review. Explain why the Higher Education Proclamation requires every HEI to have an internal quality assurance system.

1. 2.1 What a standard is6 min
2. 2.2 How standards are developed and used7 min
3. 2.3 The nine areas, part one8 min
4. 2.4 The nine areas, part two, and evidence8 min

Objectives. Define a standard and distinguish content, educational and performance standards. Describe how standards are developed from international and national references and facility policy. Explain the four uses of accreditation and self assessment standards. Name the nine areas of the national accreditation standards and state the importance of each. Identify sources of verification for each area and match evidence to standards.

1. 3.1 Purpose and the committee7 min
2. 3.2 Methods, evidence and lines of enquiry7 min
3. 3.3 Scoring and summarising7 min
4. 3.4 Writing the self assessment report7 min

Objectives. State the purposes of programme self assessment and its other names. Establish a self assessment committee with duties, responsibilities and an eight week timeline. Apply document review, direct observation and interview correctly, following lines of enquiry and triangulating evidence. Score standards with the one to five rating guide and summarise results by area. Write a self assessment report with the required sections and evidence based narrative.

1. 4.1 Finding the gap and its cause7 min
2. 4.2 Cause analysis tools7 min
3. 4.3 Interventions and the action plan7 min
4. 4.4 Change, resources and recognition8 min

Objectives. Identify performance gaps from self assessment results and explain the three performance factors, capability, opportunity and motivation. Apply less structured and more structured cause analysis techniques including brainstorming, fishbone, Pareto and tree diagrams. Select interventions matched to the type of cause and write an action plan with SMART objectives in the required format. Explain change management, its benefits, challenges and solutions. Describe resource mobilisation strategies and recognition of achievement.

1. 5.1 Measuring progress6 min
2. 5.2 The accreditation procedure8 min
3. 5.3 Decisions, monitoring and appeals7 min
4. 5.4 Your quality enhancement plan, capstone8 min

Objectives. Distinguish self, internal and external assessment and state the recommended frequency of internal assessment. Describe the steps of external programme evaluation from initial application to site visit and final report. State the accreditation decision thresholds, full, conditional, denial and withdrawal, and their durations. Explain monitoring during the cycle, annual status reports, substantial change, appeals and recognition. Write a quality enhancement plan for one area of your own programme.