Geraldine MacCarrick

Governance and Evaluation

A quality assurance process will examine the way in which the program is structured and how it functions as an organization. The program should make explicit the committee structure governing the activities of the program, and this should include appropriate representation from staff, trainers, students, and trainees. Relevant external stakeholders whose input should be sought would include medical councils, higher education authorities, national bodies responsible for medical workforce planning, and other representatives of the public and private health-care sector.

The Active Advocate

The medical manager as health advocate uses their expertise and influence to advance the health and well-being of individual patients, communities, and populations.

The Effective Medical Manager

The effective medical manager is expected to plan and manage organisations and the people within them utilising available resources appropriately. The medical manager brings clinical input to organisational decision making.

The Adaptable Communicator

The ability to communicate effectively with diverse groups is a necessary part of the medical manager’s role. The adaptable communicator will consider the message and how it is presented to diverse audiences in different contexts. In addition the effective communicator should demonstrate active listening skills.

The Creative Collaborator

Medical managers build effective relationships with a myriad of stakeholders including other colleagues, patients, their families and carers, funders and policy makers to achieve improvement in health outcomes.

Expertise in Medical Management

Medical managers are uniquely placed combining medical expertise and management skills to allow a deeper understanding of the complex organisation of the health care system. Key amongst the roles of the expert medical manager is the commitment to design and delivery of effective corporate and clinical governance systems.

The Resourceful Scholar

Managers must demonstrate lifelong commitment to self-directed learning which includes critically evaluating information for decision making; facilitating learning for all stakeholders and applying research skills to management tasks.

Professional Leadership and Management in Medicine

As health care leaders, doctors need to be strategic leaders demonstrating the ability to anticipate, envision and to empower others to create change. Within this context health care leaders need to demonstrate awareness of ethical and professional issues in managerial decision making.

Assessment of Learning

This chapter examines the quality assurance aspects of assessing student learning. The terms assessment and evaluation are sometimes used interchangeably. For the purposes of this book, “assessment” is reserved for the description of activities which measure medical student knowledge, performance, and attitudes, while the term “evaluation” is reserved for faculty, student, course, and clinical rotation appraisal and feedback.

The Educational Program

This chapter examines the educational program offered by a medical institution, the adequacy of the content of the program, the instructional methods used to deliver the program, how the program is managed, and how the program is linked with other stages of the medical education continuum.