The BSPED’s national Peer Review programme was initiated in 2011 and the first round of review was completed in 2017 for centres in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Following a revision of the UK Standards for Paediatric Endocrinology and endorsement by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the second round of BSPED peer review started in July 2019.
The BSPED is now running a Virtual Peer Review process, which started with reviews of several centres successfully taking place each year.
The following UK centres have an up to date peer review:
- Newcastle 2025
- Alder Hey 2025
- Leeds, January 2024
- Leicester, January 2024
- Glasgow, December 2024
- Edinburgh: Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Apr 2024
- Cardiff, December 2023
- Southampton, Nov 2022
- Birmingham, June 2022
- Belfast: Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, March 2021
- Oxford, Feb 2021
- Manchester, June 2021
- London Gt Ormond Street, Nov 2021
- London: St George's Hospital, June 2021
- London Evelina Children’s Hospital, June 2020
- Nottingham, July 2019
The summary reports from the 2025 peer reviews are now available in the members-only area of the BSPED website to help centres learn from each other. The BSPED Peer Review process provides centres with an excellent opportunity to learn from other centres, to gain support for resource requests and to ensure that they are operating to standards.
We will be in touch with centres who are due their next review and welcome proactive contact from centres.
Get involved!
We are looking for individuals to help with the review process, including nurses and DGH paediatricians, as well as tertiary consultants. We also strongly encourage GRID trainees to get involved with the reviewing process – supporting the lead clinician with note taking and documentation to build up experience. Please encourage your new GRID trainees to consider this as a development opportunity.
Please do get in touch with Peer Review Officer Dr Guftar Shaikh on [email protected]
For those who would like to know how the BSPED has established an international benchmark in ensuring the quality of paediatric endocrinology services through peer review, please read the recent publication in Hormone Research: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33789302/
The peer-review is a formative assessment of the following domains of paediatric endocrine care:
- Access to specialised paediatric endocrine services
- Resources of specialised paediatric endocrine services
- Environment and facilities, care of the child and family/patient experience
- Communication
- Clinical governance, professional education, training and evidence base
The new peer review is based on the previous format i.e. a Self-Assessment questionnaire and a Centre review with objective references to the 2019 standards.
The following documents and forms are available to help paediatric endocrine centres in the peer review process and can be requested by contacting the BSPED office ([email protected]):
- A BSPED Peer Review Centre Guidance Document
- A PowerPoint training guide for Peer Reviewers
- BSPED peer review form - for conducting the peer review
- A sample timetable.
- A self-assessment questionnaire to send to DGHs.