Malta signs up to “gold standard” UK Foundation Programme
Published: 27/02/2009
Dr Stuart Carney, UK Foundation Programme Office (UKFPO) Deputy National Director, announced today that the UKFPO has signed an agreement with the Maltese health service to implement the Foundation Programme in Malta.
“We are very proud of the success of the Foundation Programme in the UK and are pleased that Malta wants to implement it. The UKFPO has agreed to help them implement the Foundation Programme in Malta from July of this year.”
Dr Joe Cassar, Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Health Care Services Division, Ministry for Social Policy, Malta expressed his support of the implementation of the programme at a press conference in Malta’s capital city of Valletta:
“I am delighted that we are working with the UK Foundation Programme Office on this initiative. We are committed to ensuring that our junior doctors have the generalist medical knowledge and skills to meet the needs of the modern Maltese healthcare system and we are certain that the Foundation Programme will deliver it. We see the Foundation Programme as the gold standard for medical training in Europe.”
Dr John M. Cachia, Director General Healthcare Services, has been working with representatives of the UK health service for the past six months to ensure that the UK training programme could be implemented here.
Dr Cachia said:
“Following the initial meetings with Department of Health officials in August, our team has been working hard to ensure that this is a reality. We are planning to implement the Foundation Programme in July. It is an ambitious project, but I am confident that with the help of the UK Foundation Programme Office we will succeed.”
Last week, three delegates from the UK Foundation Programme Office travelled to the new postgraduate medical training centre in Mater Dei Hospital in Malta to train future educational supervisors on their duties. They also met with medical students and house officers to explain how the new training programme will work.
Aspects of the new Foundation Programme have been piloted with Maltese junior doctors since January 2009, and beginning in May, a two-month pilot of the assessments and e-portfolio will take place before the programme begins in earnest in July 2009.
The Foundation Programme is a two-year structured programme of workplace-based learning for medical school graduates that forms a bridge between medical school and specialty training. The programme aims to provide a safe, well-supervised environment for doctors to put into practice what they learned in medical school. This programme was implemented in the UK in 2005 and is administered by the UK Foundation Programme Office.
