Archived: Kingston Education Centre - The Village Surgery

Updated 17 December 2021

Kingston Education Centre is an independent service provider which is part of Kingston GP Chambers, a federation of 21 member practices in Kingston. Kingston Education Centre is based above one of the member practices The Village Surgery in New Malden 157 High Street. This service is registered to carry out diagnostic and screening procedures along with treatment of disease, disorder and injury.

This location is primarily a training and education centre for clinical students training to become Doctors, Nurses, Paramedics, Physiotherapists or Occupational Therapists. Students can observe and carry out assessments or treatment for patients when appropriate. All of the training is supervised by senior clinicians. All patients are informed of the presence of students so that they can give informed consent. This service is an extended access service for all of its member practices so that any available appointments can be used by them as long as it is suitable for the patient and the students. The location sees approximately 200-500 patients a month, although as this has only been during the pandemic, this number will likely change as healthcare normalises in the future. In a year, this location provides daily training sessions for clinical students.

This location also trials projects and initiatives for developmental areas such as new technology and pilot schemes to potentially implement throughout the member practices. The location is based on the first floor and has two large treatment rooms which can be accessed via stairs or elevator. The location shares the same reception as The Village Surgery. The location offers face to face and online appointments. It offers appointments to patients Monday-Friday 9:30-12:30; and Wednesdays 13:30-16:30. The service is open to students every week 9:00-17:00.

How we inspected this service

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 17 December 2021

This service is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Kingston Education Centre as part of our inspection programme. This was the first CQC inspection of this location under the current CQC inspection methodology, the service registered with CQC at this address in March 2021. We are mindful of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on our regulatory function. We will continue to discharge our regulatory enforcement functions required to keep people safe and to hold providers to account where it is necessary for us to do so.

This service is part of a federation called Kingston GP Chambers which is made up of 21 member practices within Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames. They provide support for NHS GP practices and provide addition healthcare services to the patient population in and around Kingston. This includes extended access and a range of specialist services.

The Chairman of the federation is the registered manager. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

Our key findings were:

• The service had good systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When they did happen, the service learned from them and improved their processes.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• All staff received full training and had detailed recruitment files.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• The extended access service organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs. Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way.
• Clinical students benefitted from multi-disciplinary training which in turn benefitted the federation practice members and its patient lists.
• Innovative and progressive methods were being implemented by this service and its staff team to improve patient care and clinical student qualification experiences. For example, the service had rolled out four new technological devices for everyday use by GPs to make assessments of patients more efficient and easier to monitor.
• The way the service was led and managed promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centre care. There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care