Key messages and links to 23 July 2021

Welcome to Health Education England’s regular stakeholder bulletin.

In this bulletin we will provide:

• Latest messages from our Chief Executive
• COVID-19 latest updates
• Overview of HEE education and training news
• An update from your regional office

Weekly messages from HEE

Read recent messages from Dr Navina Evans, Chief Executive, HEE:

HEE looking to the future for the health and social care workforce
HEE has been commissioned by the Minister of State for Care, Helen Whately, to work with our partners and review long term strategic trends for the health and social care workforce.

This will review, renew and update the existing long term strategic framework for the health workforce, HEE’s Framework 15, to help ensure we have the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours to deliver world leading clinical services and continued high standards of patient care. For the first time ever, the framework will also include registered professionals working in social care, like nurses and occupational therapists.

Make sure your voice is heard

HEE has launched its formal ‘Call for Evidence’ aimed at developing a shared understanding of the future of the health and care workforce. We want to hear from as many stakeholders and partners as possible, including people who need care and support, patients, carers, members of the workforce, as well as students and trainees. Please complete the survey today.

This Call for Evidence will support the development of a long term strategic framework for health and social care workforce planning. This will review, renew and update the existing 15-year strategic framework for workforce planning, Framework 15. While Framework 15 focused on health only, this update will extend into social care, encompassing regulated professionals in social care for the first time.

HEE COVID-19 latest updates

We have created a COVID-19 update webpage that provides guidance and information from HEE, which applies to all students and trainees. This webpage also includes HEE COVID-19 surge guidance.

To keep up to date with plans for medical training recovery, visit HEE COVID-19 webpages.

Minimising disruption and avoidable extensions caused by COVID-19’

In the second of a series of regular updates on the recovery of training, HEE’s Deputy Medical Director Sheona MacLeod, discusses how HEE is supporting educators to meet with doctors in training and understand their individual competence gaps and to mitigate the number and length of extensions to training.

We are collating a wide range of training intervention case studies from across the country. These will be added to over the next few weeks, and we are keen to encourage all employers, educators, and trainees to consider whether any of these solutions will help training progression for them individually or within their local area or region. Also, please share your training recovery suggestions with us at policyandregulation@hee.nhs.uk.

Read the full update on how HEE is working with the system to fund and support doctors to progress through training.   

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

Medical

Enhancing Junior Doctors’ Working Lives
Trainee doctors have shared their views on their training, working lives and wellbeing in a report, published today by Health Education England (HEE).

Enhancing Junior Doctors Working Lives (EJDWL) is a detailed look at how HEE has supported its trainee doctors over the last year. During 2020, many of them have had their education impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. HEE would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone involved: trainees and trainers, HEE and system colleagues, and the front-line NHS who form the pillar of the NHS community.

Flexible working options, more dynamic recruitment rounds, and a review of the assessment and progression process are some of the positive actions recognised by trainees in this year’s report. HEE has committed to embed the lessons learned from the COVID pandemic into everyday working, and to integrate new processes and approaches to support education and training in the future.

Pharmacy

The Trainee Pharmacist Foundation Year Programme

Over 500 pharmacy employers, education leads and training providers joined our webinars with NHSE/I and the General Pharmaceutical Council earlier this month, to focus on the implementation of the 2021/22 foundation training year.

This system-wide approach was a great opportunity to explain the key changes to education and training initiated by the regulator earlier this year, and to showcase brand new resources available to help support the changes.

You can find out more on our trainee pharmacist foundation year website.

Download the webinar resources from our dedicated designated supervisor page.  If you have any questions about the initial education and training of pharmacists and foundation training, please contact traineepharmacist@hee.nhs.uk.

Mental health

New Individual Placement Support mental health career resources to share – employment specialist role

We are pleased to launch a new Individual Placement Support (IPS) career resource, hosted on the elearning for healthcare website, to raise awareness of the IPS employment specialist role.

These animated videos support IPS evidence-based services in promoting roles that provide employment support services integrated within community mental health teams for people who experience severe mental health conditions.

The NHS Long Term Plan is committed to supporting an additional 35,000 people with severe mental illnesses where this is a personal goal to find and retain employment by 2023/24. To help us achieve this commitment, please share these resources with your networks to attract people to work in this rewarding role.

This animation is part of a series of workforce initiatives and will complement the emerging IPS recruitment hub launching August 2021. If you have any questions or would like to find out more, please email mentalhealth@hee.nhs.uk or visit the Individual Placement Support programme elearning for healthcare webpage. 

Workforce and education initiatives

HEE wins award at the ‘Oscars’ of the apprenticeship world

The Talent for Care National Apprenticeship Team are celebrating winning a national award for their work supporting employers to deliver apprenticeship programmes.

The team have been awarded ‘the outstanding contribution to the development’ in the employer’s category at the FE Week and Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) Apprenticeship Awards 2021. This is the second year running the HEE’s work with apprenticeships has been recognised.

The awards are a celebration of excellence in apprenticeship delivery in the UK and provide an opportunity to recognise the contribution of employers and providers.

The Future of Clinical Bioinformaticians in the NHS: An Assessment Report and Recommendations to Build and Boost the Future Workforce

HEE’s Digital Readiness Programme has commissioned a report to evaluate the current situation and shape the future of the clinical bioinformatics workforce in the NHS.

Clinical bioinformatics is the application of bioinformatics in clinical settings to improve the delivery of patient care. Clinical bioinformaticians are already an important workforce in the NHS and with the proliferation of digital technologies, their importance is set to increase. This two-phase project aims to assess the retention and utilization of clinical bioinformaticians in the NHS trusts, as well as to develop and implement necessary strategies for improvement. Read the report and provide feedback on the 10 recommendations that have been developed to improve the future of clinical bioinformatics as a profession in the NHS

Professional communities and networking for Health & Social Care informatics specialists: Consultation report

In 2020, HEE commissioned a discovery project to understand the needs of health and social care informatics professionals and their participation and involvement in networks, to improve professional and service development in the future. Through this work five recommendations were developed.

However, there were some gaps in this engagement from people early on in their careers and within certain sectors of the NHS and Social Care. In view of this, HEE decided to further test the recommendations with those that had not had an opportunity to input in the discovery project and this report gives an overview of these additional findings.

Resources developed to help reduce the impact of antibiotic resistance

We have launched two new videos to help support health and care staff in a variety of settings to understand and prevent the threats posed by antimicrobial resistance.

These video resources have been developed by HEE in collaboration with Public Health England (PHE), NHS England and NHS Improvement, Care Quality Commission and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. They can be found on HEE’s YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/wgqgqZIv8n4 and https://youtu.be/ONAivOFFV4A.

HEE provides two invaluable resources for clinicians in training

Newly qualified and junior doctors along with trainee pharmacists can tap into two invaluable resources as begin their transition during August rotation.

Our NHS Knowledge and Library Services team funds online access to over 130 medical handbooks published by Oxford University Press (OUP) and the clinical decision-making tool, BMJ Best Practice.

Both resources give clinicians an additional boost to their professional expertise and reassuring them they are making the right decisions backed by trusted evidence 24/7. All titles in the Oxford Medical Handbooks series as well as Oxford Handbooks in Nursing and the ‘Emergencies In…’ series are included while BMJ Best Practice provides step by step guidance on diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and prevention as well as medical calculators, how-to videos and patient information leaflets.

Get the handbooks at HEE/OUP site and BMJ Best Practice at bmj.com/hee . Both available via NHS OpenAthens (instructions here) or if you need help getting access please ask your Trust library team – they’ll be happy to guide you!

Opportunity to join Health Education England as the Head of Digital Transformation

Are you an established leader with expertise in agile principles and large whole-organisational change? Our Head of Digital Transformation will deliver the people, process and cultural changes to enable HEE to be a Digital First organisation.

Find out more about the role and apply.

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.