Ms Caroline Spillane:

That is a very important point. As guidelines are issued to all students, they know the Medical Council is undertaking a visit. It is up to the medical school to notify the students, but the expectation of the accreditation team is that there would be a high degree of participation by students in every year of the programme and that student representatives would also participate. Normally we have a good turnout of students. It is all done in private between the accreditation team and students. As it is completely confidential and anonymised, feedback from students to the team would not lead to anybody being identified.