The Board of the Australian Medical Council (AMC) has endorsed a range of accreditation reports and the continued strategic engagement of the AMC in current medical regulation and accreditation reforms.

AMC President, Professor Richard Smallwood, said the AMC was actively involved in preparing for the introduction of national medical registration and accreditation, while ensuring existing AMC accreditation and assessment processes were robust and effective.

"We are actively and deliberately sharing the core strength of the AMC -  which is the depth, breadth and independence of the collective knowledge and expertise available to it - with the architects of the new national medical registration and accreditation scheme," Professor Smallwood said.

He said collaboration, a commitment to standards and independence would continue to characterise the AMC's approach across the scope of its operations. Major initiatives demonstrating this over the last 12 months include the:

• Development of a draft national code of conduct for medicine, on behalf of all state and territory medical registration boards
• Implementation of an extensive national consultation process to support the development of the draft code, supported by a grant from the Department of Health and Ageing
• Introduction of substantial new online capacity and improved services to international medical graduates (IMGs) including establishment of a call centre for IMGs
• Implementation, at the request of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) and with the state and territory medical boards, of national uniform assessment for IMGs from 1 July 2008
• Escalation in the number of on and off shore assessments of IMGs through the AMC MCQ to 1,825 onshore and 566 in the last 6 months. New offshore MCQ exam capacity came on-stream in late 2008, including five new exam sites in India at Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi.

At its meetings on 20 November and 8 December 2008, the AMC Board accepted a range of detailed accreditation reports after accreditation teams made:

• Three follow-up assessment visits to new medical schools:
  • assessing the implementation and later stages of the University Of Western Sydney and the University of Wollongong medical programs, both of which took their first medical students in 2007
  • assessing the medical course at Bond University, which first took students in 2005. The report identifies a number of significant challenges for the University's Medical Program, but notes a clear commitment by the University to addressing these as a priority. The AMC will continue to work collegially with the University to ensure its medical program can in a sustainable way meet the AMC's accreditation standards. The AMC has affirmed the accreditation of the Medical Program until the end of 2009 and will send an accreditation team back to review it by the end of March 2009
• A follow-up visit to a major course change:
  • assessing the implementation of the new five-year program at the Monash University Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine in Malaysia, which accepted its first intake of students into the Malaysian campus in 2007
  • A reaccreditation visit to an established school:
  • assessing for reaccreditation the six-year undergraduate medical program at the University of Otago.

The Board also accepted the report for the extension of accreditation to the new medical school at the Australian National University.

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