Key Messages and links to 27^th May 2020

Welcome to Health Education England’s weekly COVID-19 stakeholder bulletin.

HEE is working with partners to support the system-wide response to COVID-19. Our priority is to ensure trainees and learners are kept informed of immediate changes to their training and recruitment, as well as to support returners to the NHS.

In this bulletin we will provide:

• Overview of HEE and our partner’s national response to COVID-19
• An update from your regional office
• Signposting to useful resources and contact information

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

Medical Training – The medical training rotations webinar took place on Tuesday 26 May. The session covered the background to the Covid-19 response so far and an overview of plans for August rotations. The recording of the session will be available in due course on YouTube.

The next webinar will take place on Wednesday 3 June 7pm, the focus of this webinar will be ARCP and will be led by Professor Sheona MacLeod, Acting Director of Education and Quality and Executive Medical Director and guest speakers will include representatives from the GMC and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. The link to join the session will be shared on HEEs social media channels nearer the date.

Feedback Sessions for Healthcare Learners – Health Education England has sent a call to healthcare learners deployed during COVID; to include student AHPs, nurses, midwives and Interim Foundation Doctors. We are running the virtual feedback sessions on Thursday 4 and Monday 8 June; to specifically capture learners experiences around support and training.

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

COVID-19 Patient Information for Vulnerable Groups – As we all know it is vital that we and the healthcare workforce can communicate with all our audiences effectively. During the Coronavirus pandemic the need to do so is even more acute.

HEE’s Library and Knowledge Services  team has developed a website which contains high quality patient information that meets the information needs of specific patient groups, and for people that require or prefer information in accessible formats such as easy read, sign language, and Makaton. This enables frontline health and care staff who directly work with patient, clients, and families to find, share and use reliable COVID-19 information. The website at https://library.nhs.uk/coronavirus-resources/ includes material on the following:

• coronavirus resources in accessible format
• coronavirus resources for older people
• coronavirus resources for children and young people.

The team will be adding further sections with resources for different patient groups and updating the site as new resources are published.

We would like to ask that you promote the website through your own networks. A communications toolkit has been circulated to HEE’s stakeholders including communications colleagues in trusts, CCGs, and ICS/STPs requesting that they promote the website through their channels to those working on the front line, and the organisations and agencies with whom they work locally, to the benefit of patients and the public. It is expected that staff in across health, social care and the third sector will find this content useful. To view the communications toolkit, click here using the password LKSResources.

If there are other strands of public and patient information about COVID-19 that you would like to see covered, please forward your suggestions to KFH.England@hee.nhs.uk. 

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

HEE elearning for healthcare (elfh) – COVID-19 elearning programme –

The elfh programme is still be used by lots of the health and care workforce and has now seen more than 1,200,000 session launches. The elfh team is continuing to add new content to the programme based on the needs of the workforce responding to the pandemic.

A new learning path called “Physical Healthcare for Staff in Mental Health Settings” is now available.  The learning path includes the following content:

• Health and Social Care Interventions: Children and Young People
• Health and Social Care Interventions: Adults
• Learning Disabilities and Physical Health and can be accessed here

A second learning path for staff working in primary care and community settings called “Supporting Patient Mental Health for the whole workforce” is now available.  The learning path includes resources for those supporting adults and children with learning disabilities and can be viewed here

A learning path aimed at nurses, midwives and AHPs – but is also relevant for other members of the workforce with a supervisory role – is also now available.  The “Support for Supervisors” learning path includes resources to guide supervisors on how to provide effective feedback and support those who are being supervised.  The resources can be accessed here

For more information about the elfh COVID-19 programme select here.

elearning sessions for radiographers, radiologists and breast clinicians now live – The National Breast Imaging Academy (NBIA) project is a collaborative, national, multidisciplinary initiative which encompasses a range of solutions to address the workforce shortage in breast imaging services.  These solutions include the establishment of a national centre of excellence for training, an innovative, online technology-enhanced learning platform, the NBIA Online and the development of high-quality training programmes for radiographers, radiologists and breast clinicians.

Due to the current pressures on the health and care workforce responding to Coronavirus (COVID-19) the NBIA team recognises the impact this is having on trainees and face to face learning.  Therefore, in response to this challenge the NBIA team has worked with elfh and accelerated the launch of some of the elearning sessions to support the learning for radiographers, radiologists and breast clinicians.

For more information about the sessions, including details on how to access the NBIA elearning programme, please click 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.

Key Messages and links to 15^th May 2020

Welcome to Health Education England’s weekly COVID-19 stakeholder bulletin.

HEE is working with partners to support the system-wide response to COVID-19. Our priority is to ensure trainees and learners are kept informed of immediate changes to their training and recruitment, as well as to support returners to the NHS.

In this bulletin we will provide:

• Overview and Call for Evidence of HEE and our partner’s national response to COVID-19
• An update from your regional office
• Signposting to useful resources and contact information

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

Call for Evidence – What learning points has the Pandemic exposed, in terms of how we can rapidly define the ‘new future’ for education and training? Read our Chief Executive’s latest blog

As HEE and the wider NHS begins to plan the restart, recovery and reform of core business, we need to ensure that we do not lose the innovations, opportunities and benefits from the collective actions and decisions taken to support the Pandemic.

HEE and partners across the UK continue to play a key role in supporting the COVID-19 response, including the biggest effort ever to increase the workforce, which has seen: the deployment of 10,000 returning health professionals; 30,000 student nurses, doctors and other health professionals starting their NHS careers early; and upskilling thousands of existing staff to be deployed to support frontline services.

As part of embedding the positive changes and innovations to achieving this during the pandemic we are keen to hear the views and insight from partners and stakeholders to questions such as:

• How was the urgent effort to deploy our workforce during the COVID-19 surge achieved?
• What did we do that was different that aided the rapid response?
• What opportunities has the crisis highlighted that we should grasp?
• How can we use learning now to build a resilient future in workforce and education and training terms?
• What are the implications of COVID-19 for our workforce and education reform?
• What positive changes have we made in education and training that we do not want to lose going forwards?

If you would like to contribute your views or find out more, please contact us at C19Lessons@hee.nhs.uk

Joint statement on planned placements in England – Health Education England along with the Council of Deans of Health, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and NHS Employers has published a joint-statement, expanding on the previous NMC and HCPC emergency measures to support the COVID-19 response, to clarify how planned placements for nursing, midwifery and allied health students should be used. You can view the joint statement here.

Thank you to all students who have opted in to take up a paid placement to help fight COVID-19. The image below shows the process from opting in through to deployment:

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.

https://bit.ly/2W8UNdt

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.

https://bit.ly/3fquVBt

Nursing – Tuesday 12 May, the 200^th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth, marked International Nurses Day, a chance to celebrate the role of nurses as clinicians, leaders, researchers and educators across the globe. Many of the planned celebrations were postponed as a result of COVID-19 but HEE took the opportunity to thank the nursing community and acknowledge the vital work that they do, which has never been more important than in the current time. Our Chief Nurse, Mark Radford, led the HEE virtual celebrations  and premiered this film to mark the occasion.

Physician Associates – The Faculty of Physician Associates (PAs) have set up a COVID-19 special temporary register for graduate student PAs who have completed their University programmes but have yet to pass the PA national exam. Find out more at www.fparcp.co.uk/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:

COVID-19 Patient Information for Vulnerable Groups – HEE Library and Knowledge Services have worked with PHE, NHSE/I and the Patient Information Forum to collate trusted, accessible online patient information resources for all frontline staff across health, social care and voluntary organisations who work directly with patients and family groups. https://library.nhs.uk/coronavirus-resources/

Health Careers – this year’s Step into the NHS primary school competition for Key Stage 2 children has been extended until the 19^th June. More pupils can now draw, write, act or dance their ‘thank you’ to the NHS. Click here for more information.

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

HEE elearning for healthcare (elfh)

Coronavirus (COVID-19) elearning programme – Earlier this week the elfh COVID-19 elearning programme reached the milestone of one million session launches since it went live in mid-March.

New resources for radiographers have recently been added to the programme.  The content includes minimising risk using PPE and infection control, how to safely use mobile equipment and optimising image quality.  The resources can be accessed here.

Three new training videos have also been added to the programme for staff working in a critical care setting, an acute hospital setting and to support staff with difficult conversation and end of life care.

Guidance for psychologists has been added to the programme: “Adaptations to psychological practice: Interim guidance during Covid-19 pandemic” can be accessed here.

For more information about the programme select here.

The Learning Hub – COVID-19 release – HEE’s Technology Enhanced Learning team will be releasing the Learning Hub, with core functionality, at the end of May 2020.  The Learning Hub is being released to support the Coronavirus (COVID-19) response by enabling the health and care workforce to share and access resources during the pandemic.

The Learning Hub will be a new digital platform that will provide easy access to a wide range of resources that are pertinent to education and training in health and care.  Users will be able to contribute digital resources (including video, audio, images, documents, web links, articles etc) and search and access the variety of learning resources that will have been contributed by stakeholders and the health and care workforce to support system readiness and recovery from the pandemic.  New features will frequently be released in line with the original plan for the functionality of the Learning Hub in its Beta phase.

The Learning Hub will add to HEE’s existing suite of platforms and complements the major role the elearning for healthcare Hub is playing as part of the COVID-19 response.

If you would like to know more about this release of the Learning Hub follow @HEE_TEL on Twitter, read the blog and look out for regular updates over the next few weeks.

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.

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.

Welcome to Health Education England’s weekly Covid-19 stakeholder bulletin.

HEE is working with partners to support the system wide response to COVID-19. Our priority is to ensure trainees and learners are kept informed of immediate changes to their training and recruitment, as well as to support returners to the NHS.

In this bulletin we will provide:

• Overview of HEE and our partner’s national response to COVID-19
• An update from your regional office
• Signposting to useful resources and contact information

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

Medical – Almost 3,000 final-year medical students have now signed up to join the COVID-19 frontline, and hundreds will begin this week (April 13).
Read the full story here

Nursing and Midwifery Returners – As part of system-wide planning, we are working as Team CNO and with our key stakeholders to support our colleagues working in health and social care. In this unprecedented situation we are working with those who have relevant skills and knowledge to support the national response.

We are supporting the Your NHS Needs You campaign asking former registrants to consider returning to support our health and care services.

We are also working in partnership with the Chief Nursing Officers from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on UK-wide policy and guidance to support the deployment of additional nurses and midwives to support patients and families during the covid-19 outbreak.

This includes registered nurses and midwives and colleagues from our own organisation and other arm’s length bodies (ALBs) who are registered nurses and midwives.

Nursing and Midwifery Students – Over 15,000 nursing and midwifery students from across the country have now opted to join NHS frontline staff in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

These students were the first to be contacted by their university and asked about their interest and whether they would like to opt-in to a paid placement.

This has now been extended to include all nursing cohorts eligible for the extended paid-placements as part of the revised education programmes permitted by the COVID-19 legislation.

All second- and third-year undergraduate nursing students, second- and third-year midwifery students, and postgraduate nursing and midwifery students are also being contacted by their university to discuss their options.

AHPs – HEE is continuing to develop proposals to provide safe and beneficial opportunities for our AHP students that allows them to keep developing their skills while supporting the NHS at this difficult time. Universities are asked to contact their eligible AHP students to discuss their options for using their education programme to help with the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The HEE-led COVID-19 AHP student data collection is now live for eligible second and third year undergraduate and postgraduate students to note and then report their preferences for opting-in to paid clinical practice. The details of students who opt-in will be reported by HEE to the ‘Regional Workforce Cells’ who will place students with NHS provider organisations.

This data collection is to support the AHP Student Support Guide and the joint AHP leads letter (available here).

Guidance for students who do deploy is here.

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

Postgraduate medical trainees continue to provide a significant contribution to service and are an essential part of plans to support the response to COVID-19. Therefore, it has been agreed to cease all planned rotations in May, June and July.

Read the letter in full here

Letter from the four Statutory Education Bodies to all trainees, including information on management of ARCPs.

Read the letter in full here

As NHS Nightingale Hospitals become operational, it is anticipated there may be requests for medical and dental trainees to be redeployed into them. Guidance for postgraduate medical and dental trainees has been uploaded to our website.

Frequently asked questions for trainees are updated regularly on this page.

Information and guidance around Quality during the Covid-19 pandemic

Health Education England is stopping all routine education quality activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our focus remains on the quality of the clinical learning environment and its impact on the safety of learners and patients.

Our principles, expectations and information on how to raise concerns during this time are set out in the documents below:

• HEE statement on stopping quality visits during Covid-19
• Escalating concerns process during Covid-19
• Quality Principles during Covid-19

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

HEE’s elearning for healthcare (elfh) COVID-19 elearning programme is available, free of charge, to all health and care professionals in the UK.  It has been launched more than 650,000 times since it went live on 18 March 2020.  The elfh content has also been made available, via eIntegrity, free of charge to health and care professionals working throughout the world and is being used in 79 countries to date.  Thank you for continuing to share details about our COVID-19 elearning programme.

Regularly updated and now includes:

• Essential Guidance from the NHS, UK Government, WHO and BMJ
• Public Health England – Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
• Infection Prevention and Control
• Resources for Staff Working in Critical Care Setting
• Resources for Staff Working in Acute Hospital Setting
• Resources for Staff Working in Primary Care and Community Setting
• Resources for Nurses, Midwives and AHPs Returning to work, being Redeployed or Up-Skilled
• Resources for other Healthcare Staff Returning to Work
• Resources for End of Life Care COVID-19
• Resources for Specific Professions
• Resources for Volunteers supporting Health and Social Care
• Critical Care and Ward-Based Equipment Guides
• Staff Wellbeing and Resilience during COVID-19

Supporting the wellbeing of the NHS workforce:

HEE is recruiting experienced medical educators, academics and others to support our educational functions. These roles, undertaken remotely, will support the welfare of our junior doctors at a time of increased stress.

Read the full story here

HEE is proud to support a mental wellbeing support package launched by the NHS. Our NHS people are doing extraordinary things in the face of an extraordinary challenge, and so need an extraordinary level of support.  All NHS people will have access to a range of support through one point of contact:

• a free wellbeing support helpline 0300 131 7000, available from 7.00 am – 11.00 pm seven days a week, providing emotional support from trained volunteers and onward signposting to specialist financial advice, bereavement care and coaching
• a 24/7 text alternative to the above helpline – simply text FRONTLINE to 85258
• online peer to peer, team and personal resilience support, including through Silver Cloud, and free mindfulness apps including Unmind, Headspace Sleepio and Daylight

More information on support can be found here.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Webinars –

• On Friday 17 April at 7pm our Chief Nurse Mark Radford will be hosting a webinar and answering student nursing and midwives questions, providing advice and guidance.

You can join the webinar via this link

• SuppoRTT – HEE has a series of webinars for doctors who are coming back from a break from clinical practice into an unprecedented and uncertain period of clinical work.
  Find out more about upcoming webinars here

Watch recordings of previous webinars here

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