Quality enhancement at RCSI
Arising from the mission of RCSI – to educate, nurture and discover for the benefit of human health – our corporate vision is to be an international leader in supporting healthcare professionals through high-quality education, training, research and service to enable people to live long and healthy lives.
The RCSI Quality Committee is responsible for the creation of policy and for the implementation of quality processes and quality assurance/quality improvement activities across academic and administrative areas of all RCSI campuses. The Quality Committee reports both to the Medicine & Health Sciences Board (MHSB) and the Surgery & Postgraduate Faculties Board (SPFB). MHSB is the governing body for all RCSI educational programmes leading to degree awards in health sciences, while SPFB is the cognate body governing postgraduate/professional training and certification in surgery and related specialties.
The RCSI Quality Assurance Framework presents a comprehensive description of the structures, policies and procedures that have been implemented to assure and enhance the quality of our educational and training provision, and to demonstrate this quality to our internal and external stakeholders.
The RCSI Strategic Plan 2018-2022 ‘Transforming Healthcare Education, Research and Service’ identifies quality as one of the three foundations for, and measures of, successful delivery of the Plan’s provisions.
RCSI Strategic Plan 2018-2022 PDF | 7127.9 KBQuality assurance of programme design and approval
All matters related to programme design and approval lie within the remit of the RCSI Awards & Qualifications Committee (AQC) which reports to the Medicine & Health Sciences Board.
The AQC has developed and implemented a set of policies, guidelines and document templates for the establishment of new programmes leading to educational awards.
The Awards & Qualifications Committee also administers a rolling schedule of programmatic reviews within RCSI.
Schedule 3 (9) of the Qualifications and Quality Assurance (Education and Training) Act 2012 introduced Section 47A to the Universities Act 1997 which provides that the degrees and qualifications of RCSI shall also be degrees and qualifications of the National University of Ireland (NUI) where they are approved by the NUI and while RCSI remains a recognised college of the NUI. Accordingly, degrees of RCSI are awards of the NUI and, in consequence, the procedure for programme design and approval is designed to meet the requirements of both RCSI and NUI.