Internal governance structures relevant to quality

RCSI is both an independent degree-awarding institution and a surgical Royal College. Two high-level boards were established in early 2011 to govern these domains of activity in parallel

• the Medicine & Health Sciences Board (MHSB) is the governing body responsible for all degree-awarding educational activities of RCSI
• the Surgical & Postgraduate Faculties Board (SPFB) is the cognate governing body responsible for the postgraduate training, competence assurance and professional examination activities of RCSI.

Responsibility for institutional quality strategy and for related QA/QI activities lies with the RCSI Quality Committee (QC) which reports both to MHSB and to SFPB, as shown in the schematic (above). The QEO is the ‘executive arm' of the QC and report to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of RCSI directly. The QC has one sub-committee reporting to it, the Institutional Review Working Group (IRWG); the IRWG is responsible for the management of Institutional Reviews conducted under the aegis of Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI).

The QC will coordinate and support the work of the IRWG.  The Awards and Qualifications Committee (A&QC), report to Academic Council (AC).  Because of the key role played by the AC as a forum for heads of academic departments and of administrative functions, the QC also will have a reporting relationship to AC to ensure that its members are appraised of QA/QI issues and activities; speciffically this will mean that reports and documents issued by the QC through the QEO will be communicated to the AC for information on a discretionary basis.

Quality Committee terms of reference

Quality Enhancement Office terms of reference

RCSI Quality policy

 
Awards and Qualifications Committee (A&QC)

The RCSI Awards & Qualifications Committee (A&QC) is delegated authority and operational responsibility for the Medicine & Health Sciences Board (MHSB) to evaluate and consider programmes which fall under the National Framework of Qualifications (NFQ) for approval, rejection and accreditation.

A&QC Terms of Reference

Programmatic Review Guidelines

Business Case Form

Academic Proposal Form