DOHA: The Supreme Council of Health (SCH) is all set to launch Qatar’s own healthcare framework and accreditation system for healthcare practitioners to continuously develop and upgrade their skills.
The National Continuing Medical Education/Continuing Professional Development (CME-CPD) Framework will be launched in March next year by the Qatar Council for Healthcare Practitioners (QCHP) at SCH.
The framework will include an accreditation system for all healthcare practitioners across Qatar.
“The accreditation project, the Accreditation Department, and continuous medical education framework are among the many existing national health strategy projects. These projects are included in Qatar’s planning for the future and as such are directly related to the vision of the country’s leadership. This vision has been adequately translated into projects and deliverables which have helped us to participate in the reform taking place in the healthcare sector and the medical education of Qatar. This has had a profound effect on the continuous professional development of all health care practitioners,” said Dr. Samar Aboulsoud, A/CEO of the QCHP and the Manager of the Department of Accreditation and Health Profession Education. “You can’t ensure the competency of anyone without ensuring that this individual is exposed to education and training all the time. Applying this understanding to healthcare professionals is of even greater importance,” he added.
The CME-CPD Framework will apply a range of provisions unique to both Qatar and global healthcare. Healthcare practitioners will find Qatar’s new framework helpful to their respective journeys but also flexible due to the manner with which its activities are offered.
The framework has rejected the idea of enforcing any stringent sense of course work for Qatar’s healthcare community, but is instead allowing its members to create a set of activities which are tailored to their specifications, said a QCHP statement yesterday.
Workshop on new surgical techniques, training seminars relevant to updated practices for the nursing profession and attendance at medical conferences are all among a range of activities which will be eligible within the Framework. By strengthening the abilities of healthcare practitioners, the ultimate benefits will be passed on to the patient.
“Our number one priority is our patients. We care for our patients and as such we care about the quality of care which they receive. We always monitor the patients’ outcomes and the healthcare outcomes within our healthcare system. Maintaining the presence of competent practitioners is crucial to ensuring the best patient outcomes,” added Aboulsoud.
“Continuous medical education has historically been designated for physicians, but continuous medical development is for everyone and it is more than just education, it is a form of development which includes aspects other than merely sitting in a classroom and gaining knowledge; it is more complex than that,” he added.
The Framework’s accreditation system is a tailored approach to continuous medical development and is exceptional for its embrace of interprofessional education.
Unlike accreditation systems found elsewhere, Qatar’s programme will not be divided between different professions within the medical field. This ensures that doctors, dentists, surgeons, nurses, physiotherapists and pharmacists alike will be held to the same expectations.
“At the heart of our system is a concept that we’ve embraced as both a department and as an accreditation system. This system is ‘interprofessional education’. Interprofessional education is an approach to education in healthcare which promotes professionals to learn together interprofessionally,” said Dr. Aboulsoud.
“Rather than having a workshop that targets only one form of practitioner, interprofessional education is about providing a session of learning which collectively speaks to everyone at once. Practitioners should always consider the need to address the conflicting prerequisites of their colleagues. We have embraced the need for this consideration with the concept of interprofessional education, yet another distinctive aspect of our new system,” he added.
The Peninsula
