Stakeholder Briefing – Issue 17

Key Messages and links to 19^th August 2020

Welcome to Health Education England’s weekly stakeholder bulletin.

In this bulletin we will provide:

• Weekly message from the Chief Executive’s Office
• Overview of HEE education and training news
• An update from your regional office

Weekly message from Chief Executive, Professor Wendy Reid –

This week’s message focuses on working flexibly and differently in the future. Read the full message here. 

We are supporting all professions to rapidly grow to meet the needs of patients by:

Interim Foundation Pharmacist Programme: Registration is now live

Registration for the Interim Foundation Pharmacist Programme is now live. This new education and training programme has been established to support the 2019/20 cohort of pre-registration pharmacists whose training and registration have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It also provides a unique opportunity to accelerate pharmacist early years’ education and training reform and supports delivery of the NHS People Plan for 2020/21.

This new Interim Foundation Pharmacist Programme, known as IFPP, was officially launched on 3rd August. It is a HEE-funded 12- month education and training programme, starting in September 2020. The IFPP has three aims:

• To support provisionally registered pharmacists in England transition to full General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) registration and beyond.
• To develop pharmacists’ ability to achieve high quality outcomes for patients, improve patient safety and reduce medication errors.
• To inform the next stage of pharmacist education and reform.

The programme will run for 12 months, starting from September 2020, and will be available to all provisionally registered pharmacists providing NHS funded care and services in England.

This is a positive step towards delivering the recommendations from HEE’s Advancing Pharmacy Education and Training (APET), and meeting the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS Interim People Plan and NHS People Plan for 2020/21.

Find out more on our dedicated IFPP web page, including FAQs and an eligibility and process flowchart. Join up to receive weekly updates from the programme team at: fpp@hee.nhs.uk.

Meeting the nursing workforce challenge – You can read what HEE’s Chief Nurse Mark Radford had to say about meeting the nursing workforce challenge in three opinion pieces published by the Nursing Times, Nursing in Practice and Public Sector Executive recently.

General Practice Nursing Specialty Training Programme up for HSJ award – HEE’s General Practice Nurse Specialty Training programme has been shortlisted for this September’s HSJ Awards in the category for System or Commissioner Led Service Redesign Initiative. The innovative programme was set up to address the difficulties registered nurses find when trying to embark on a career in general practice. Most employers prefer nurses with experience, but without experience there’s no job and without a job there’s no opportunity for experience. You can read more about the General Practice Nurse Specialty Training programme on our website.

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

Education and Training tariff for 2020/21 published – The Education and Training tariff guidance document, including the 2020/21 tariff rates, have now been published by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC). You can access the guidance document here.

ACP Virtual Conference 2020: Save the date and research poster competition – HEE’s national conference for ACP will be held online as a virtual event on Monday 9 November, and Thursday 12 November 2020. The conference will feature a mixture of live, pre-recorded, and interactive sessions available on demand. Conference registration will open at 09:00 on Monday 21 September 2020. For further information about the ACP Virtual Conference 2020, visit the conference webpage.

Advanced practitioners and trainees are also invited to submit abstracts for poster presentations of their research at the conference. For further information, visit the abstract submission webpage. The deadline for the receipt of abstract submissions is 12:00 on Wednesday 23 September 2020.

 New Roles in Primary Care Guidance – Health Education England has developed the New Roles in Primary Care Guidance.  Available through your local training hub or download from the elearning for healthcare (elfh ) hub, https://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/new-roles-in-primary-care/ , you will now have access to additional information about the Primary Care Networks Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) outlined in the GP Contract as well as other new roles and advanced level of practice.

The guidance (reviewed quarterly) includes –

• An overview of the role
• Funding
• Training and development
• Activities undertaken
• Skills and competencies
• Supervision requirements
• Educator providers
• Approved ARRS and other job descriptions
• Case study examples

Any questions? We can put you in touch with your local training hub lead. Email traininghubs@hee.nhs.uk

Improved understanding equals improved health – Did you know that 1.7 million adults in the UK read and write at or below the level of a 9 year old? Or that 43% adults do not understand written health information, rising to 61% not understanding when we add numbers?

As HEE’s national library and knowledge services leads, we are sharing our expertise in health literacy with NHS colleagues. We are also beginning to collaborate with information workers across sectors to increase the health literacy skills, underpinned by digital literacy skills, of the general public. This is so that future citizens have the skills to engage with digital-first health and care services.

To help share the learning, we are training local NHS library and knowledge services staff to deliver a suite of health literacy training resources. We also worked in collaboration with NHS Education for Scotland to develop health literacy elearning that is freely available on the elearning for healthcare platform. Do promote the elearning, particularly ahead of international Health Literacy Awareness month in October.  – for more information on our health literacy work contact KFH.england@hee.nhs.uk

Innovation and Transformation on LinkedIn – The Innovation and Transformation Directorate brings together a range of programmes and services to support systems to address their workforce transformation challenges and help develop a more technically enabled, digitally skilled workforce, able to access training and upskill through new and innovative methods.

Responding to key elements of We are the NHS: People Plan 2020/21 the Digital Transformation chapter of the NHS Long-term Plan and recommendations in the Topol Review ‘Preparing the healthcare workforce to deliver the digital future’, the directorate is in place to enable the innovative and transformational change needed across health education.

To help showcase our work, sharing news, gathering your opinion and stimulating debate we have launched a LinkedIn showcase page.

Please follow us and join the conversation. HEE Innovation and Transformation

BMJ Best Practice – an award-winning resource now free to all NHS staff – BMJ Best Practice is a clinical decision-making support tool providing the latest evidence-based information to use at the point of care. Funded by Health Education England (HEE), it is free to all NHS healthcare professionals in England.

Rated as one of the best support tools worldwide, BMJ Best Practice includes step by step guidance on diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and prevention as well as medical calculators, how-to videos and patient information leaflets.  Content includes clinical expertise from over 1,600 international authors an 2,500 peer reviewers which means users have up to date references available at their fingertips, anywhere, any time of day or night.

All NHS staff in England can access BMJ Best Practice by going to bmj.com/hee where they can register using their NHS OpenAthens username and password (instructions here). Once registered they can also download and use it via an app on a mobile device.

New HEE Non-Executive Director – Health Education England is pleased to welcome Dr Harpreet Sood as a Non-Executive Director (NED). Previously an associate NED with HEE, he works as an NHS GP in London and is a digital health expert with a wealth of experience at the interface of health care and digital technology. Read more here.

Topol Programme for Digital Fellowships in Healthcare – Recruitment for Cohort 2 of the Topol Programme for Digital Fellowships in Healthcare will begin in September. The fellowship programme provides fellows with time and support to design and deliver digital health projects and initiatives in their trusts and a programme of workshops and mentoring to stimulate and support fellows to lead digital health transformations for NHS staff and patients. This will be an exciting opportunity for NHS clinical staff, including doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, dentists, healthcare scientists, pharmacists and others, to shape and accelerate the NHS digital revolution. Read more.

The British Association of Dermatologists (BAD) are pleased to partner with HEE to increase the number of Topol Fellowships available to Dermatology. These posts are intended to develop successful applicants in digital leadership and technological literacy. Projects are invited for digital innovation in a dermatology setting. These proposals should describe the unmet need, local support for it and an outline of the proposed project delivery.  All proposals should focus on any aspect of AI or digital medicine as applicable to bioinformatics, diagnostics and pathway/training re-design and delivery. These fellowships are open to all members of the BAD and are intended for delivery over 2 or 3 days a week for a 12-month period.  Block periods of study are not possible. Successful candidates will be appointed in line with the Topol scheme and benefit from the cross-specialty and multi-professional working that this offers.  Appointed fellows in dermatology will also be part of the technology workstream part of the Education Unit at the British Association of Dermatologists. It is hoped that successful individuals will be the future digital champions of the specialty.

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

The Learning Hub – Did you know …

• The Learning Hub is a new digital platform that provides easy access to a wide range of education and training resources for the health and care workforce. Organisations and users can contribute and share resources for those in health and care to access.
• You can contribute a wide range of educational resources to the Learning Hub, from infographics to videos, simulation scenarios to remote teaching sessions?
• You can generate and share links via social media or via a direct web link to the resource to widen the reach to audiences across the health and care workforce? (See attached image). 
• You can search for, access and rate a resource and your learning activity is recorded.

There are many exciting features and additional functionality currently being developed that will be released to users regularly.  This is just the beginning of the journey.

The Learning Hub team is currently working on the development of catalogues, which will enable organisations to have their own area on the Learning Hub; offering a home page with branding capability and a place for resources to be made available under an organisation’s own identity.  The first release of catalogues will be available soon and enhanced with more functionality over time in line with the Learning Hub roadmap.

Come and take a look at what the Learning Hub has to offer and how this could support your organisation in sharing and accessing learning resources: https://learninghub.nhs.uk. If you would like further information about the catalogues or uploading content please email: enquiries@learninghub.nhs.uk.

For more information about the Learning Hub follow us on Twitter: @HEE_TEL and visit our blog to read about our journey so far.

Toolkit outlines safe return to simulation training – HEE’s TEL team has produced a toolkit for learners to safely return to face-to-face simulation training.

‘COVID-19 toolkit for safe simulation in health and care’ was produced with support from experts in the field and highlights the five areas that need to be considered before returning to face-to-face training with suggestions as to how this might be done.

The topics covered are:

• Engaging with stakeholders including commissioners, professional bodies, patient groups and employers while seeking expert advice from local infection prevention and occupational health teams
• Assess risks with groups including learners, technicians and simulated patients and measure outcomes
• Environmental factors, such as assessing the number of people in a simulated training space and introducing local guidance for cleaning equipment
• Face-to-face simulation activities with advice on mitigating risk such as registering attendance and providing access to appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
• Remote access to training by developing and enhancing access to shared online resources and providing remote observation of simulation activity.

The toolkit also features a key note on evaluation and learning which will be vital in encouraging future development and delivery of simulation training. The toolkit is available here.

Flu Immunisation elearning programme updated for the new season – HEE elfh has worked with Public Health England (PHE) to update the Flu Immunisation elearning programme to ensure it is up to date for the 2020/21 flu season.

With the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, it is more important than ever that this year’s annual flu vaccination programme is safely and effectively delivered to as many of those eligible as possible to protect those at risk. It is therefore crucial that those giving flu vaccines are confident, competent and have up to date knowledge about the vaccine(s) they are giving. The Flu Immunisation elearning resource is designed to provide all healthcare practitioners involved in delivering the national flu immunisation programme with the knowledge they need to confidently promote high uptake of flu vaccination and administer the flu vaccines to those who need them.

For more information about the programme, including details on how to access, visit: www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/flu-immunisation/.

We are supporting digital readiness across the workforce:

Digital Workforce Planning – The Digital Readiness team, in partnership with the North West Informatics Skills Development Network, held a webinar on July 31^st to promote the workforce planning activities for determining the current and future workforce in health informatics and the digital workforce. The webinar explained the purpose of the data collection exercises. A recording of the webinar is available.

Please get involved and help us create the future digital workforce! These people are critical to plan for in delivering a high-quality data driven NHS…

NHS Digital Technology and Health Informatics – Workforce Demand Forecasting Exercise – Health Education England (HEE) is looking for help from CIOs, CCIOs, CNIOs and other senior digital leaders in the NHS in shaping the future digital technology and health informatics’ workforce. We would like digital leaders to take part in an exercise forecasting the size of the different areas of the workforce and the skills required in 2030. The forecasts made should be within the context of two alternative, but plausible scenarios developed by HEE of what the future might look like for this workforce. Undertaking the exercise will require engagement and discussions with colleagues and should be a thought-provoking and stimulating one. The estimates submitted will help HEE in developing a national workforce plan for this sector.

The background to this forecasting exercise and further information can be found in a DigitalHealth.Net presentation (20:38 onwards).

To take part please register your interest – Once registered we will send you the instructions and a demand forecasting toolkit. Alternatively, contact Don Liu – don.liu@hee.nhs.uk – at HEE for further details.

NHS Gradate Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Scheme – The Digital Readiness funded Digital Graduates scheme is continuing to fund the rollout of this innovative recruitment programme. The NHS Graduate DDaT Scheme not only increases the number of individuals coming into the health care system with digital, data & technology skills but increases quality of graduates, while addressing the diversity ratios for females in Digital, Data & Technology, BAME, regional variations and career changers. Supported by high quality development pathways this will create a long-term pipeline of fast track entry level staff within Digital, Data & Technology into senior roles, support succession planning and meet increasing technological demands.

The scheme is now recruiting for organisations in the North West, Yorkshire & Humberside, South East, London and the South West. Further details, including contacts, are available on the Graduates into Health website.

Please share the link with networks and colleagues in these regions, particularly in HRD, OD and Health Informatics to enable them to make the most of this great opportunity in getting high quality digital professionals into the NHS.

Have your say on the future vision for the expansion of the NHS Digital Academy – A project is currently underway to determine what the NHS Digital Academy should be going forwards and how it can become the home of all digital learning and development for our workforce. The initial offering, the Post Graduate Diploma in Digital Health Leadership (delivered by Imperial College London and partners for 3 cohorts of 100 participants) has been well received but is also oversubscribed and meets a particular need. We want to build on this success to support a wider range of individuals in different roles and professions at different levels of seniority.

Please check out the engagement platform where you can download the emerging vision and submit feedback through a variety of mechanisms. This phase of the project is open until Monday 14^th September. Diversity and increased opportunities for all is at the heart of this future vision, allowing individuals to make more informed choices. We are exploring how this could benefit all roles at all levels of seniority and be delivered in a variety of formats to support different personal needs, work needs and learning styles. Throughout the Autumn we will be sharing updates including a refined vision and draft implementation plan so there will be further opportunities to get involved.

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.