Stakeholder Briefing – Issue 4

The number of student and trainees that have agreed to work on the frontline to help fight coronavirus has now reached over 30,000.

Almost 22,500 student nurses and midwives have volunteered to take up paid placements on the frontline.  Nearly 2,500 Allied Health Professionals (AHPs), covering a range of professions including occupational therapists, physiotherapists and paramedics have also answered the call.

More than 3,000 medical students have chosen to graduate early, freeing them up to start work over the next weeks and months instead of in August and 2,200 medical students in years 1-4 have agreed to support the frontline with various volunteering roles.

Healthcare Scientists – The first in a series of webinars by the National School of Healthcare Science was held on Friday 1 May at 2pm. The webinar was led by Professor Berne Ferry, Head of the National School of Healthcare Science and Jane Lynch, Training Programme Director of the STP; they answered questions, provided guidance and advice to trainees and training officers about the challenges of progressing with training during the Coronavirus pandemic. It was attended by 800 people and the recording is available to view here.

Joint HEI / NSHCS webinar for STP trainees – On Thursday May 14th at 2pm Carol Ainley, Director of Manchester Academy for Healthcare Scientist Education, will be joining senior colleagues from the National School, to answer questions about the academic aspect of the STP.

STP assessment and completion in 2020 for third year STP trainees and training officers – On Friday May 15th at 2pm Jane Lynch, Training Programme Director of the STP, will be joined by Sandie Gay, Head of Education & Assessment at the NSHCS, will be hosting a webinar aimed specifically at third year trainees and training officers to answer questions about completion and the alternative to the OSFA, the Independent Assessment of Clinical Competence.

Visit the National School of Healthcare Science to get links to the webinars closer to the time.

Apprentices – HEE has secured End Point Assessment (EPA) flexibilities for Nursing Associate and Registered Nurse apprentices which allows them to register with the NMC and complete their apprenticeship at the same time. As a result, we anticipate this could be up to 3,000 apprentices who have been able to support the frontline. Employers are already sharing the positive impact this is having on their apprentices at this challenging time.

In addition to this we have secured further flexibilities in a range of apprenticeship standards such as Level two and three Healthcare Support Workers, Level five Assistant Practitioner L4 Associate Ambulance Practitioner and L4 Mammography Associate.

Midwifery Students – HEE’s Chief Nurse, Mark Radford, and Senior Midwife, Sally Ashton-May, hosted a webinar for student midwives last week and were joined by two students Rachael Dewey and Alicia Burnett, as well as Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, the Chief Midwifery Officer for England, Birte Harlev-Lam, Executive Director for Professional Leadership at the Royal College of Midwives, and Jacqui Williams, Senior Midwifery Advisor at the Nursing and Midwifery Council. In addition, we have launched a new Covid-19 midwifery webpage to support the midwifery community. Tuesday 5 May was International Day of the Midwife, a day for recognition of the valuable work that midwives do supporting mothers, babies and their families, and Sally Ashton-May has written a blog and shared a thank you message on social media commemorating all of the hard work of midwives and student midwives during Covid-19.

Doctors Returning to Training – If you missed our knowledge refresher and wellbeing webinars for doctors returning to training – you can now watch them online.

We are ensuring core HEE work to support our NHS colleagues continues:

Trainee progression in August 2020 and beyond – A letter from the four Statutory Education Bodies to Medical Royal Colleges,

As we move past the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, we must now ensure that doctors in training are enabled to progress their careers in the way that they would expect and deserve, and in the way that our systems need as we begin delivering the recovery and renewal phase. Read the letter in full on our website.

Annual Review of Competency Progression

Latest guidance on ARCPs for specialty and foundation trainees has been updated on our website.

For specialty trainees:

• Guidance for trainees and HEE PGME local teams
• Frequently asked questions
• Appeals process

For Foundation trainees:

• Guidance for foundation trainees
• ARCP Outcomes Operational Guide

Final Review of Competency Progression for Dental Core Training

Guidance and associated annexes regarding competency progression for Dental Core Training has been published. The update includes:

• Guidance document
• Annex A: Structured Educational Supervisor’s report
• Annex B: Outcome 10 Coding
• Annex C: DCT FRCP Checklist

Update for trainees in their final year of GP specialty training

The 4 Statutory Education Bodies (HEE, HEIW, NES and NIMDTA), RCGP, GMC, BMA, NHSE and DHSC, as well as trainee representatives have all been working together to achieve a deliverable solution for final year GP specialty trainees.

A joint letter has been published on the website.

All the above mentioned documents can be found on our medical and dental trainee information page and trainee FAQ page.

We are making sure all professions have the training they need to make a difference:

HEE elearning for healthcare (elfh) – The COVID-19 elearning for healthcare programme is still being well used by the health and care workforce.  It has been launched over 940,000[1] times since it went live mid-March 2020. The team are now starting to assess usage statistics from different professional groups as the early part of the evaluation work on the programme.

Six of the headline metrics on session launches are:

• Students – 181,738
• Nursing and midwifery – 168,880
• Medical – 147,732
• AHPs – 63,109
• Social care – 44,701
• Public health – 3,417

New content is still being added to the programme and in the last couple of days we have created a new learning path called “Resources for Cabin Crew Supporting Delivery of Direct Patient Care”.  This content is for redeployed cabin crew providing direct patient care supporting nursing and healthcare assistant staff.  The resource can be accessed here.

We have also added dental resources to the Returning Clinicians programme which you can find here and a new learning path for nurses who have been deployed into primary and community care.  The learning path can be accessed here.

A new webinar has also been added for pharmacists supporting 111 via the Returning Clinicians (excluding GPs) programme.  This resource can be accessed here.

For more information about the programme including a drop-down list of resources available by role select here.

 

FURTHER INFORMATION

By following @NHS_HealthEdEng you can keep up to date with new information and resources as they are published. Most importantly are the notifications of webinars being broadcast during the week.

Right now, making sure we are communicating properly is obviously incredibly important. If there’s any information you think is missing on HEE’s webpages, please let us know by submitting your question to the HEE Q&A helpdesk.