Children’s Health Ireland Welcomes Medical Council Report and Confirms Full Accreditation Across All Sites

Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) has welcomed the publication of the Medical Council’s accreditation report following a comprehensive inspection of its training sites at CHI at Temple Street, CHI at Crumlin and CHI at Tallaght.

Following a site visit conducted on 24–25 September 2025, all three CHI sites were found to meet the Medical Council’s Accreditation Standards and have been granted full approval to provide specialist medical education and training for a five-year period.

The Medical Council report confirms a positive, supportive and collegial training culture across CHI. Trainees reported good access to consultant trainers, confidence in seeking support, and equitable training experiences across Non-Consultant Hospital Doctor (NCHD) groups, despite the pressures of a busy clinical environment. Consultant trainers were consistently described as available and engaged, and the overall learning environment was recognised as high quality and well structured.

The inspection was initiated by CHI’s CEO, Lucy Nugent, following an internal review that identified culture and governance concerns within one department. These concerns were not found to be widespread during the Medical Council’s independent inspection.

The Medical Council commended CHI’s comprehensive self-evaluation, extensive engagement with trainees, trainers and management across all sites, and the robustness of its response process.

The report includes multiple commendations and 13 constructive recommendations, all of which CHI has welcomed. A dedicated multidisciplinary working group has already been established, using a focused “sprint” approach with clear timelines to deliver improvements.

Key actions underway or completed include:

• Improved HR recruitment and induction processes, including a significantly enhanced, CHI-wide induction programme
• Dedicated HR support clinics for trainees across all sites
• Enhanced incident reporting education as part of trainee induction
• Strengthened mentoring, professionalism and culture initiatives, including “Speaking Up for Safety”
• Formalised feedback mechanisms for trainees
• Continued focus on EWTD-compliant rostering
• Clearer policies on reasonable accommodations for trainees with disabilities
• Improved access to guidance, ethical standards and educational resources

The report identifies challenges relating to HR and ICT systems, many of which stem from CHI operating across three legacy hospital sites. CHI acknowledges these challenges and notes that many ICT-related issues will be resolved through the planned move to the National Children’s Hospital (NCH), which will provide a modern, unified digital and clinical infrastructure. CHI is actively improving current HR processes and trainee induction.  Senior academic, clinical and management leadership at CHI, with the full support of the CEO and Executive Management Team, are committed to delivering the agreed Action and Implementation Plan, which will be shared with the Medical Council. Continuous improvement in training quality remains a core priority for the organisation.

CHI is reassured by the Medical Council’s findings that its training programmes are robust, well governed and highly regarded by trainees. The organisation looks forward to further enhancing training and patient care with the opening of the National Children’s Hospital.

Our staff welcome the new NCHDs to Children's Health Ireland - reflecting on the difficulties coming in as NCHDs and what they love about working in Children's Health Ireland.