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Find out how CQC work and share information with Royal Colleges.
Royal College of Nursing (RCN)
CQC and RCN work together to share information and expertise in a number of ways. We share information about regulation and monitoring compliance with RCN, so that they can update their members.
Projects
We also work jointly on specific projects. For example, when the RCN produced ‘The Principles of Nursing Practice’, which explains what people can expect from nursing practice, we mapped these to our ‘Essential Standards of Quality and Safety’. This helped RCN members to understand how, by achieving the principles, they could also contribute to compliance with the essential standards. Colleagues from the RCN also worked with us to produce the observation prompts and guidance for monitoring compliance for nutrition.
Specialist advisory groups and inspections
Members of the RCN help us by sitting on our specialist advisory groups, and provide advice and support for our work programmes, such as our domiciliary care and dignity and nutrition thematic inspections. For example, they have produced guidance on safe nurse staffing levels in the UK.
Surveys and consultations
The RCN also undertake surveys that are helpful to us. Recent examples include, ‘Putting quality into the Care Quality Commission in England’ which asked RCN members for their views on CQC, and ‘Persistent challenges to providing quality care’, which sought the views and experiences of frontline nursing staff in care homes in England about their work.
The policy team at the RCN contribute to our consultations and add CQC publications to their website too, ensuring members are kept up to date. We also have links between the RCN regional officers and our regional inspection teams.
Royal College of Midwives (RCM)
Our work with the RCM is similar, in that we work together to share information and expertise. We also have links between RCM regional officers and our compliance teams, so that they can share information about any concerns within a locality.
Members of the RCM also sit on our advisory groups, for example on our recent themed review of midwifery. And RCM policy leads comment on our consultations and provide guidelines on staffing and practice issues that are helpful to us in our compliance work, and have assisted us in developing our information guide on maternity services.
Royal College of Physicians (RCP)
As part of our engagement with doctors, we’ve been represented on the Clinical Standards Board of the RCP for several years. This provides a useful channel to talk with physicians about the improvement activities of the RCP and about our work and progress.
Royal College of Radiologists (RCR)
Since the Imaging Services Accreditation was launched, we no longer have formal committee arrangements with the RCR, but we do have ad hoc meetings and discussions when required. A recent example of this was the uncertainty surrounding our role in regulating telemedicine services. This is a new and complex area, especially as we have no regulatory powers outside England, and telemedicine is, by its nature, not restricted to a particular location. We have worked with the General Medical Council to clarify the position on this.