Provision of Simulated Patient Services for Kent and Medway Medical School

Concepts

• health training
• canterbury
• kmms
• provision of simulated patient services for kent and medway medical school
• provision of simulated patient services
• kent and medway medical school
• medway medical school
• patient engagement
• safe clinical training of medical students
• assessment of medical students

Location

United Kingdom: The Kent and Medway Medical School

Description

The Kent and Medway Medical School will require the services of an agency to provide 'simulated patients'/'standardised patients' (SP) for safe clinical training of medical students.

Total Quantity or Scope

Simulated Patients (SP) are involved in both the teaching and assessment of medical students' clinical and communication skills in all medical schools in the UK. These skills are recognised by the General Medical Council (GMC) as 'core competencies' as described in the 'Outcomes for Graduates' (2018) document. SPs form an integral and essential element of skill development, as it provides a standardized experience for students to practise and demonstrate their skills in a safe environment. In order for KMMS to achieve national accreditation through the Medical Licencing Assessment set by the GMC, it is imperative that KMMS engage high quality SPs in teaching and assessment. Furthermore, as the involvement of actual/real patients in teaching or assessment will be slowly scaled up (as our systems develop for patient engagement), the need for a secure provision of simulated patients is a major part of the appropriate training of KMMS students. Part of the requirement of such a provider is to provide appropriate training to the SPs on EDI aspects and also to input on assessment scenarios relating to clinical practice from a patient perspective. Peel Roleplay is able to provide this to KMMS due to their national engagement in this area with other medical schools and the relevant expertise built up. Managing the supply of actors/SPs for participation in comms workshops and the OSCEs are labour intensive. The use of a reliable provider such as Peel Roleplay will ensure we can deliver the service required. It is not feasible to arrange and source individual actors with the right experience and training on an adhoc or case by case basis.

Award Detail

CPV Codes

• 80561000 - Health training services
• 80531200 - Technical training services

Legal Justification

The Public Contracts Regulations 2015 allow contracting authorities to proceed with the negotiated procedure without prior publication of a contract notice under a specific set of circumstances. The University considers that the use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication of a contract under Regulation 32 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 is justified for the following reasons: Circumstance 2 (article 32(2) (b)) "Where the works, supplies or services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator for any of the following reasons:- (i) the aim of the procurement is the creation or acquisition of a unique work of art or artistic performance (ii) competition is absent for technical reasons, (iii) the protection of exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights, 1. Only suitable provider identified When a new medical school is announced by government and local universities, this triggers a huge amount of news and social media posts and news reports. KMMS was no different, esp since this is a game changer for Kent's struggling healthcare force and challenges to recruit and retain staff to this coastal county. When the school was established and some initial staff was recruited, myself and Dr Katherine Joekes (who has left KMMS now), investigated for suitable companies that could support us in the provision and development of simulated patients (SPs or actors) for clinical skills training and assessments. This is a core and critical aspect of training medical doctors at UK medical schools. We spoke to some local acting companies who were based in Kent and had some experience of this space. One was a small local acting company who did some work with the Kent school of pharmacy, but when we explained the nature of our needs, the informed us that they are not able to set-up and run an SP recruitment and training process at all, they were just local freelance actors working informally with Kent and could not help us. Dr Joekes, who came to KMMS from a London medical school and had lots of connection with London based agencies providing such services to the London based medical schools. Contacted these agencies to ask if they are perhaps interested in supporting us as a new school in Canterbury, Kent. Unfortunately, they were too busy with supporting the 5 medical schools in London and did not have the capacity to work outside London. Since we needed local Kent recruitment and training support locally to Canterbury. We then found Peel Role play who was prepared to support us locally, even though they were based in Yorkshire, but they had experience in supporting local schools across the UK. By this point the pandemic hit and the school needed to also run some skills sessions and we contracted them on a 3-year basis initially. 2. Regulator and accreditation risks The School has now built up a very strong working relationship with Peel Roleplay over the past 2.5 years and they have delivered a very good service on all fronts. They have built a large pool of local SP actors which we are using for all our curriculum skills sessions that needs SPs and we use them in every clinical skills exam. We as a school are extremely reliant on this service to deliver our curriculum and to achieve our General Medical Council (GMC) accreditation as a medical school in the 24/25 academic year. The GMC is the regulator in the UK for medical education. We also face (like all other UK medical schools) the national GMC medical licensing assessment (MLA) in 2024-25 year, and this is a major risk for a new medical school in terms of how our students perform. We are therefore very keen to continue working with Peel Roleplay in achieving this critical strategic goal for KMMS (perform well in MLA and receive full and final accreditation as a medical school that can award primary medical qualifications).

Other Information

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