Exceptionally report a risk

We expect approved education institutions (AEIs) to tell us any concerns about an approved programme, this could include any concerns with the academic setting of the programme or an issue/risk which might affect the student practice learning environment or where there is a patient safety concern.

If there’s the potential that our standards are not being met, then this should be raised with us via our exceptional reporting form.

When to make a report

You should make an exceptional report if:

• students have raised any complaints leading to an internal investigation in the practice learning environment or the approved education institution,
• there’s an immediate or impending risk to the safety of students, members of the public or patients,
• an unexpected or unexplained death has occurred,
• a major incident has occurred,
• a placement provider partner has been rated as “inadequate” by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), Health Inspectorate Wales, Healthcare Improvement Scotland or Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority - you do not need to do this if they have been rated by the CQC as "requires improvement",
• significant concerns have been raised by a member of the public,
• there’s significant public interest in the incident.

Make an exceptional report

Download and complete our updated exceptional reporting form.

When you've completed the relevant form, email it to us at exceptional.reporting@nmc-uk.org.

You’ll receive an automated email that confirms your form has been received by the team. We’ll then assess the risks and respond to you accordingly.

Reviewing your report

We need to assess whether the AEI is addressing any risks and that the AEI and programme(s) continue to meet our standards and requirements.

To help us with this assessment we may need to ask you for more information.

We can request this information in a number of ways, such as by phone call, online meeting, or a face to face visit.  In some cases, further action may be required, such as a monitoring visit, enhanced scrutiny, or an extraordinary review, depending on the nature and severity of the concern.

The above interventions allow the AEI to demonstrate how they have or how they intend to address the issues raised with them and how their programme and the AEI continue to meet our standards and requirements.

If we ask for more information, you need to send this to us within the stated timeframe. If you’re not able to provide the information in this time, then you need to let us know why.

When we close a concern, we’ll email you confirming this decision. Until a concern has been closed by the QA team, we expect you to continue to update us regarding the risk and your mitigations.

We may also need to speak to other relevant NMC departments to make sure that any concerns that could impact on public protection are dealt with. If a concern impacts another AEI, we'll also tell them about the identified risk.

There are occasions where we may handle personal information relating to specific individuals. We may also be involved in sharing personal information with third parties to further our overarching objective to protect the public. In general, the reason we process personal information is either because we have a legal obligation to do so or because it is necessary for the exercise of our statutory functions or any other functions in the public interest. For more information on this please read our Education and Standards information handling guidance and our Data protection policy.

Actions we can take

We will consider the information provided by the AEI and any other intelligence about the concern to get an understanding of the risks and how they are being managed by the AEI, we will then assess whether further action is needed.

If we decide that an AEI has not appropriately dealt with a concern, we can consider whether it's proportionate to withdraw approval of the AEI and/or the programme(s).

However, if we determine that there’s no longer a risk to the student learning environment or to patient safety and our standards are being met, we'll take the necessary steps to close your concern.

We'll aim to update you within two weeks of receiving your exceptional report form, however this is determined by the complexity of the risk/concern.