Key Area 7: Health and social service quality

This area of practice covers commissioning, clinical governance, quality improvement, patient safety, equity of service provision and prioritisation of health and social care services.

 

Learning experiences

By the end of phase 1 trainees should know the basic principles of commissioning, clinical governance, quality improvement, patient safety, equity of service provision and prioritisation related to this area.

By the end of phase 2 trainees should know how to collate and assess relevant evidence and make recommendations for service change and prioritisation.

By the end of phase 3 trainees should have implemented and led change in some of the areas above. They will also have proactively sought out opportunities to use evidence to influence decisions. They will have worked on highly complex issues and influenced the decisions of senior decision-makers both within and across organisations and outside it.

Potential vehicles for the demonstration of this competence area include:

  • Evidence briefings providing recommendations for policy (for boards, committees, public health colleagues, the public)
  • Writing or appraising business cases and service specifications
  • Health needs assessment
  • Press releases
  • Clinical or public health audit and governance reports
  • Development of clinical guidelines and quality standards
  • Calculation of population costings for new technologies
  • Reports on commissioning and delivery of clinical services
  • Quality improvement strategy/policy/programmes
  • Peer reviewed publication

Potential settings for the demonstration of this competence area:

By the end of training trainees will be expected to have been involved in work in developing, evaluating, improving and commissioning health and social care services.

Work must include at least two of the following:

  • an acute service setting (including clinical networks),
  • a primary care setting,
  • a mental health care setting,
  • a health protection context and a wider preventive / community setting.

These may be at local and/or regional/national level

Back to Top

Links to Knowledge and Skills Framework

  • C1: Communication
  • C2: Personal and People Development
  • C4: Service Improvement
  • HWB 3: Protection of Health and Wellbeing
  • IK2: Information Collection and Analysis
  • G5: Services and Project Management

Back to Top

Knowledge Base

Research methods appropriate to public health practice, including:

  • epidemiology,
  • statistical methods,
  • and other methods of enquiry including qualitative research methods

Disease causation and the diagnostic process in relation to public health; prevention and health promotion

Health information and audit methodology

Medical sociology

Social policy

Health economics

Organisation and management of health care and health care programmes from a public health perspective

Ethical and legal frameworks

Clinical governance

Back to Top