Library resource guides: CPD for clinical support roles: I accredit organisations using national or binational standards

Guide index

Key areas to consider in planning your CPD include:

Applying contemporary education fundamentals and practice relevant to your accreditation role, including training program requirements
Understanding the importance of high-quality clinical learning environments, including the role of supervision and supervisors, approaches to inappropriate behaviours and the importance of cultural safety for staff and patients
Applying ethical issues including privacy and confidentiality
Understanding your own biases
Identifying and managing conflicts of interests
Measuring performance against standards, including evidence-based accreditation and consistency of approach
Encouraging and supporting those being accredited to self-assess, reflect and undertake continuous improvement
Enhancing your communication skills, including difficult conversations
Collaborating, leading and following as chair or member of an accreditation panel/team
Enhancing your report writing skills

Practice evaluation (category 1)

Participate as part of a panel/team undertaking an accreditation inspection/review to accredit an organisation against defined standards and benchmarks.
Participation in accreditation committee work is claimed as clinical governance/quality assurance committee work, given that it is monitoring performance of organisations against defined national/binational standards.
Undertake a critical reflection on your accreditation work and develop a plan for practice change. Potential topics for reflection are listed in the key areas to considerApplying contemporary education fundamentals and practice relevant to your accreditation role, including training program requirements; Understanding the importance of high-quality clinical learning environments, including the role of supervision and supervisors, approaches to inappropriate behaviours and the importance of cultural safety for staff and patients; Applying ethical issues including privacy and confidentiality; Understanding your own biases; Identifying and managing conflicts of interests; Measuring performance against standards, including evidence-based accreditation and consistency of approach; Encouraging and supporting those being accredited to self-assess, reflect and undertake continuous improvement; Enhancing your communication skills, including difficult conversations Collaborating, leading and following as chair or member of an accreditation panel/team; Enhancing your report writing skills.
Participate in a cultural safety activitySee the Support across work roles > Providing a culturally safe practice tab for more information with a view to better understanding cultural safety and implications for accreditation practice. Following this activity, consider undertaking a critical reflection on what you have learnt and what it means for your practice.
Ask panel/team members to provide you with multi-source feedback (clinical support), with a trusted colleague collating the feedback and discussing it with you.

Knowledge & skills (category 2)

Attend courses and workshops to develop your accreditation skills. Claim time spent doing this under leadership and management skills development.
Attend face-to-face or virtual learning sessions relevant to your accreditation practice (for example: conferences, podcasts, webinars; key areas to considerApplying contemporary education fundamentals and practice relevant to your accreditation role, including training program requirements; Understanding the importance of high-quality clinical learning environments, including the role of supervision and supervisors, approaches to inappropriate behaviours and the importance of cultural safety for staff and patients; Applying ethical issues including privacy and confidentiality; Understanding your own biases; Identifying and managing conflicts of interests; Measuring performance against standards, including evidence-based accreditation and consistency of approach; Encouraging and supporting those being accredited to self-assess, reflect and undertake continuous improvement; Enhancing your communication skills, including difficult conversations Collaborating, leading and following as chair or member of an accreditation panel/team; Enhancing your report writing skills). Claim time spent doing this under learning sessions.
Participate in face-to-face or virtual small group learning which may include teaching or learning a new skill relevant to your accreditation practice, and which has an interactive and/or hands on component. Claim this under short format learning.

The college welcomes suggestions on additional resources and topics for CPD on accrediting organisations using national or binational standards.

Learn@ANZCA

Use the links below to access additional support resources contained on the Learn@ANZCA platform.

Note: Resources located in Learn@ANZCA require that you first register before accessing.

Bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment [Learn@ANZCA]
The module aims to help you improve your knowledge and understanding of unacceptable behaviours, enabling you to recognize when they occur and the adverse impact these have on individuals, team performance and patient safety.

CPD Note: CPD participants will automatically have this activity populated in the CPD portal.

ANZCA and FPM ASM

ANZCA | FPM occasionally run accreditation workshops as part of the annual scientific meeting (ASM). Check out the program for any potential upcoming workshops.

ANZCA ASM Website
Each year, we explore innovative new ways to deliver continuing professional development (CPD) and networking opportunities through a program of plenary sessions, small group discussions, and interactive workshops.

ANZCA & FPM resources

CPD Activity Guide
This guide contains a list of all the activities associated with the ANZCA and FPM CPD Program, as well as links to associated individual activity guides and forms.
ANZCA Educator Competency Framework
The ANZCA Educator Competency Framework describes the competencies required of educators for specialty training, from the basic competencies expected of all clinical specialists to the more advanced competencies required of oversight education committee members.
ANZCA: Bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment: policies and resources.
The purpose of this policy is to describe the behaviour expected of all fellows, trainees, specialist international medical graduates (SIMGs) and other volunteers acting on behalf of the college.
ANZCA: Conflict of Interest Policy
The purpose of the conflict of interest policy is to provide guidance in identifying and handling potential and actual conflicts of interest involving the college and its activities.

ANZCA Handbook for Accreditation by Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists The ANZCA Handbook for Accreditation sets out requirements expected of accredited training departments for all aspects of the training program leading to FANZCA. It is intended that the Handbook for Accreditation will be the usual source consulted by those seeking information about accreditation. Should there be conflict between this handbook and Regulation 37, then the regulation takes precedence.
Publication Date: v1.2 - December 2024
Faculty of Pain Medicine Accreditation Handbook by Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) This handbook contains policies and guidelines for units applying to undergo the FPM training unit accreditation process and reviewers who will assess the units on behalf of the faculty. It should be read in conjunction with by-law 19.
Publication Date: v1.4 November 2023
The ANZCA Advanced Certificate in Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine (Adv Cert in DHM) Accreditation handbook by Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists
Publication Date: v1.2 - December 2024
Unconscious Bias Toolkit by Dr Louisa Lowes FANZCA and Dr Adele MacMillan FANZCA. Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists & Faculty of Pain Medicine The following toolkit, developed by the Gender Equity Sub-Committee, provides an introduction to unconscious bias. It explains how unconscious bias influences the care our patients receive and the professional endeavours of our members. It also provides strategies and resources to identify and mitigate the effects of unconscious bias.
Publication Date: 2023
An Evolutionary Direction for Accreditation of College Training Programs - Final Report: ANZCA FPM Accreditation and Learning Environment Project by Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists
Publication Date: 9 July 2021

ANZCA: Roles in Practice - Communicator Library Guide
This guide contains informative, accessible and diverse training resources, including those available through the ANZCA library, to support communication activities that help establish rapport, trust, and ethical therapeutic relationships with patients and their families.

External resources

Frank JR, et al. The role of accreditation in 21st century health professions education: report of an International Consensus Group. BMC Med Educ. 2020;20(Suppl 1):305. Keywords: Accreditation; Assessment; Curriculum; Learning environment; Outcomes; Quality improvement.
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Abstract
Background: Accreditation is considered an essential ingredient for an effective system of health professions education (HPE) globally. While accreditation systems exist in various forms worldwide, there has been little written about the contemporary enterprise of accreditation and even less about its role in improving health care outcomes. We set out to 1) identify a global, contemporary definition of accreditation in the health professions, 2) describe the relationship of educational accreditation to health care outcomes, 3) identify important questions and recurring issues in twenty-first century HPE accreditation, and 4) propose a framework of essential ingredients in present-day HPE accreditation.

Methods: We identified health professions accreditation leaders via a literature search and a Google search of HPE institutions, as well as by accessing the networks of other leaders. These leaders were invited to join an international consensus consortium to advance the scholarship and thinking about HPE accreditation. We describe the consensus findings from the International Health Professions Accreditation Outcomes Consortium (IHPAOC).

Results: We define accreditation as the process of formal evaluation of an educational program, institution, or system against defined standards by an external body for the purposes of quality assurance and enhancement. In the context of HPE, accreditation is distinct from other forms of program evaluation or research. Accreditation can enhance health care outcomes because of its ability to influence and standardize the quality of training programs, continuously enhance curriculum to align with population needs, and improve learning environments. We describe ten fundamental and recurring elements of accreditation systems commonly found in HPE and provide an overview of five emerging developments in accreditation in the health professions based on the consensus findings.

Conclusions: Accreditation has taken on greater importance in contemporary HPE. These consensus findings provide frameworks of core elements of accreditation systems and both recurring and emerging design issues. HPE scholars, educators, and leaders can build on these frameworks to advance research, development, and operation of high-quality accreditation systems worldwide.
Bandiera G, Frank J, Scheele F, Karpinski J, Philibert I. Effective accreditation in postgraduate medical education: from process to outcomes and back. BMC Med Educ. 2020;20(Suppl 1):307. Keywords: Accreditation; Clinical outcomes; Competency frameworks; Outcome measures; Process measures; Societal accountability.
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Abstract
Background: The accreditation of medical educational programs is thought to be important in supporting program improvement, ensuring the quality of the education, and promoting diversity, equity, and population health. It has long been recognized that accreditation systems will need to shift their focus from processes to outcomes, particularly those related to the end goals of medical education: the creation of broadly competent, confident professionals and the improvement of health for individuals and populations. An international group of experts in accreditation convened in 2013 to discuss this shift.

Main text: Participants unequivocally supported the inclusion of more outcomes-based criteria in medical education accreditation, specifically those related to the societal accountability of the institutions in which the education occurs. Meaningful and feasible outcome metrics, however, are hard to identify. They are regionally variable, often temporally remote from the educational program, difficult to measure, and susceptible to confounding factors. The group identified the importance of health outcomes of the clinical milieu in which education takes place in influencing outcomes of its graduates. The ability to link clinical data with individual practice over time is becoming feasible with large repositories of assessment data linked to patient outcomes. This was seen as a key opportunity to provide more continuous oversight and monitoring of program impact. The discussants identified several risks that might arise should outcomes measures completely replace process issues. Some outcomes can be measured only by proxy process elements, and some learner experience issues may best be measured by such process elements: in brief, the "how" still matters.

Conclusions: Accrediting bodies are beginning to view the use of practice outcome measures as an important step toward better continuous educational quality improvement. The use of outcomes will present challenges in data collection, aggregation, and interpretation. Large datasets that capture clinical outcomes, experience of care, and health system performance may enable the assessment of multiple dimensions of program quality, assure the public that the social contract is being upheld, and allow identification of exemplary programs such that all may improve. There remains a need to retain some focus on process, particularly those related to the learner experience.

Harvard: Project Implicit - Harvard implicit association tests
The mission of Project Implicit is to educate the public about bias and to provide a “virtual laboratory” for collecting data on the internet.
ACSQHC: Accreditation
Accreditation provides assurances to the community that healthcare services meet the expected standards for safety and quality. It is a formal program where trained independent reviewers assess evidence of implementation for specified standards.