Final Report > Recommendations > Competent healthcare professionals > The acquisition and development of new clinical skills

The acquisition and development of new clinical skills

99. Any clinician carrying out any clinical procedure for the first time must be directly supervised by colleagues who have the necessary skill, competence and experience until such time as the relevant degree of expertise has been acquired.
100. Before any new and hitherto untried invasive clinical procedure can be undertaken for the first time, the clinician involved should have to satisfy the relevant local research ethics committee that the procedure is justified and it is in the patient's interests to proceed. Each trust should have in place a system for ensuring that this process is complied with.
101. Local research ethics committees should be re-formed as necessary so that they are capable of considering applications to undertake new and hitherto untried invasive clinical procedures.
102. Patients are always entitled to know the extent to which a procedure which they are about to undergo is innovative or experimental. They are also entitled to be informed about the experience of the clinician who is to carry out the procedure.
103. The Royal College of Surgeons of England should, in partnership with university medical schools and the NHS, be enabled to develop its unit for the training of surgeons, particularly in new techniques. It should also explore the question of whether there is an age beyond which surgeons, specifically in areas such as paediatric cardiac surgery, should not attempt new procedures or even should not continue in a particular field of surgery.