Eruera Medical Centre the first practice to achieve new Foundation programme

Eruera Medical Centre are the first practice in the country to be accredited against the new and improved Foundation programme.

The College launched the new Foundation and Cornerstone programmes on 1 April 2020, a significant achievement marking two years of work to consult, pilot and launch the new programmes.

Long Term Conditions Nurse at Eruera Medical Centre, Teresa McMenamin, coordinated a lot of the work for the assessment alongside her colleague Ailsa Malcom.

“It’s great to have the Foundation assessment completed and even better to find out we were the first to complete the new programme,” says Teresa. 

Teresa explains it took the practice around 40 hours to prepare for the Foundation programme assessment. 

“We spent a bit of a time updating our policies to fit the new programme, we also spent time loading the evidence and talking to our assessor – this was really helpful to do before the assessment and gave us an idea of how the day would run,” she says

“Completing the Foundation programme provided us with an opportunity to review our current practise and ensure we’re maintaining standards that improve collegiality and care for our patients”.

College-endorsed assessor Anne Davys accredited the practice, saying they were well prepared and had uploaded plenty of evidence prior to the visit.

“I was very impressed with Eruera Medical Centre. They prepared well for their assessment and the practice staff had a good understanding of the Foundation programme,” says Anne

“They should be proud of their overall achievement, specifically their commitment to quality improvement and the equity solutions they have implemented,” Anne says.

Teresa shared some of her top assessment tips – of which the noticeable theme seemed to be ‘planning.’ 

“Getting the team on board early in the process was crucial – we were able to check the resources we had available and prioritise our workloads ahead of the assessment,” she says.

“I also found it was important to include all practice staff in the process so the value of the Foundation programme was recognised, not just in the policy, but in the ongoing provision of healthcare within our practice.”

Teresa tells us that going forward, they will implement a system to ensure policies are kept up-to-date.

“That way we’ll have less work for our next Foundation assessment and it’ll also ensure our policies continue to work for our practice.”