International Briefs

UK: Court Upholds Disclosure of Unlawfully Obtained Evidence

The United Kingdom's High Court has upheld that unlawfully obtained evidence can be disclosed to regulators if it is relevant to a health-care practitioner's fitness to practice.

In the test case, upon receiving a complaint of sexual assault, police arrested the practitioner but failed to inform him of the grounds of the arrest, thus rendering the arrest unlawful. Police obtained emails and Skype messages by the practitioner related to similar sexual behavior as the complaint. When the General Medical Council began an investigation, the police informed the GMC of the evidence in their possession and disclosed it at the GMC's request. The practitioner challenged the disclosure of this evidence based on its unlawful attainment.

The court held that medical regulators are best positioned to determine the relevance of the evidence to their overall inquiry into fitness to practice and that disclosure is in line with regulators' interest of public protection.

Source: Council on Licensure, Enforcement and Regulation (CLEAR) website, Dec. 4, 2014

Medical Council of Ireland to Begin Inspection of Training Sites

The Medical Council of Ireland has announced that beginning in early 2015, medical training sites — such as hospitals and surgery centers — will be asked to demonstrate that quality assurance criteria are being met through a self-assessment process, which will be followed by site inspections by Medical Council staff and expert external assessors.

Components that will make up quality assurance criteria for the training of doctors range from the promotion of professionalism to educational oversight and training supervision.

The development of the criteria follows consultation with numerous stakeholders in Ireland, including the Department of Health, medical educators, trainee groups, patient groups, and national regulatory bodies. This process confirmed widespread support for maintaining and developing high-quality learning environments and support for sharing information to promote best practices.

The basic plan for the new system was proposed in the Medical Council's report, “Shaping High-Quality Learning Environments,” which was published in July 2014.

The Medical Council is now implementing a system of prioritizing sites for inspection, using factors that include information submitted in training site self-assessments, feedback received through Council surveys, the relative size of training sites in terms of the number of trainees, and other information gathered annually about the sites by the Medical Council.

For more information, visit www.medicalcouncil.ie/Education.

Source: Medical Council of Ireland Website, Dec. 12, 2014

New ePortfolio System Allows Physicians to Track Their Continuing Education

For the first time, newly trained physicians in New Zealand will be able to record and keep track of their learning anywhere and at any time through a new e-portfolio system. The introduction of the e-portfolio system is one of a number of changes to early medical training in New Zealand — which spans the first two years following graduation from medical school.

In a statement, Medical Council of New Zealand Chairman Andrew Connolly said the e-portfolio system “will make it easy for the doctors to track their progress and help them to target their learning around the things they need to learn and build on.”

Source: Medical Council of New Zealand website, Sept. 8, 2014