Key Messages and links to 9 December 2021
Welcome to Health Education England’s regular stakeholder bulletin. In this bulletin we will provide:
- Chief Executive updates
- COVID-19 latest updates
- Overview of HEE education and training news
Chief Executive updates
We have an important job to do
This week HEE’s Chief Nurse, Mark Radford, takes over Navina’s blog. It has certainly been a busy time with last week’s announcement that HEE will merge with NHS England and NHS Improvement to create a stronger organisation that aligns workforce, financial and service planning with education and training, COVID-19 recovery, the People Plan, and a robust workforce reform programme for the benefit of patients and the public. A joint statement from Dr Navina Evans and Amanda Pritchard can be found here.
In the meantime, we have an important job to do, and our focus remains on ‘business as usual’, fulfilling HEE’s unique role in the system, particularly through our part in long-term workforce planning, and through medical and clinical education and training reform. Read more on the HEE website.
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.
NHS encourages healthcare students to join expanded vaccination programme
Healthcare students across England are being asked to consider taking up bank roles to support the expansion of the Covid-19 vaccination programme.
A rapid expansion of vaccination teams nationwide to support delivery as all adults will now be offered a booster dose of the vaccine by the end of January with children aged 12 – 15 being offered a second dose, following the identification of the Omicron variant. Find out more about supporting the vaccine programme
HEE’s TEL team scoop award for COVID-19 vaccination work
Health Education England’s e-learning for healthcare (elfh) team won the Digital Transformation award at last week’s GovNews Direct Smarter Working Live Awards for their work on the COVID-19 vaccination e-learning programme.
The team, in partnership with the UK Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England) and NHS England and NHS Improvement developed the core digital theory training for all COVID-19 vaccinators in England.
Every vaccinator in England has completed the elfh COVID-19 vaccination e-learning programme meaning the resource has played a fundamental role in the success of the roll out of the vaccination programme. To date there have been more than 2.7million session launches of the e-learning programme.
For more information about elfh visit www.e-lfh.org.uk.
Multi-Disciplinary Updates
Addressing health inequalities through alternative workforce models
Our duty to patients, taxpayers and our NHS people is to ensure education and training funds are used effectively and distributed fairly in relation to patient need. Across the NHS, this means we must have open and honest conversations, based on evidence about effectiveness, outcomes, and value for money, about how this money is currently spent and whether it can be spent better.
An example of this is the funding of postgraduate medical training posts, which have so far been distributed across England, based on historical arrangements. These posts are sometimes not well aligned with patient needs and this means they don’t provide the level of some of the services required by local populations. The distribution also does not reflect the availability of clinical opportunities for training. Read the full clinical stakeholder briefing on the HEE website.
Nursing
Record numbers accept a place to study nursing and midwifery
HEE is delighted to see that this year we have more than 30,000 individuals accepting places to study nursing.
Figures released today by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) show 30,185 nursing applicants secured places at English universities in 2021 – which is a 35 per cent increase since 2018. This followed an unprecedented 25.9 per cent increase from 23,630 in 2019 to 29,740 in 2020. That growth has been sustained and this year, the total rose by 1.5 per cent. The number of 18-year-old school leavers taking up places to study nursing went up by 10 per cent in the last year. Read more on the HEE website.
Popular Genomics webinars now available to watch on demand
A dedicated webinar series developed to support nurses, midwives and health visitors learn about genomics is now available to watch on demand.
Suitable for those with little or no existing knowledge of genomics, each webinar in the three-part series explores a different theme: what genomics is; how it is changing healthcare for the benefit of patients; and how health and social care staff can learn more about it.
The webinars, which ran in summer 2021, were produced and delivered through a partnership between NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Genomics Unit, HEE’s Genomics Education Programme and the RCNi.
Medical
New video resources for foundation trainees, schools and trusts
A new video has been launched targeting all foundation trainees, foundation schools and trusts, helping them to understand more about the Foundation Programme Charter. Mike Masding, Lead Foundation School Director, talks about good practice guidance and benchmarking, The Foundation Charter. This latest video is part of a series of video resources, including some do’s and don’ts for self-development time and advice on near peer support, both of which were recommendations from the Foundation Programme Review.
Pharmacy
E-portfolio orientation workshops
Don’t miss our last December online orientation workshops for trainee foundation pharmacists, designated supervisors, and educational leads. There is no sign-up process. Check the information on our website and click the link to join.
Trainee wellbeing
As part of our support for trainee foundation pharmacists, we have curated a range of resources on our website to support foundation learning and development throughout the year. Please encourage trainee foundation pharmacists to visit the Personal Wellbeing section of our personal development and progression resources webpage. The team welcomes feedback at traineepharmacist@hee.nhs.uk.
Discover pharmacy as a career
Aligned with the 2022 UCAS application cycle, our Health Careers workstream produced some great resources to promote pharmacy as a degree choice and as a career. These resources are also available on the NHS Health Careers Pharmacy webpage, which serves as a central repository for all HEE Pharmacy careers content. Please contact pharmacyteam@hee.nhs.uk with any feedback.
Mental health
Primary care severe mental illness (SMI) physical health checks learning catalogue now available
HEE has worked with NHS England and NHS Improvement to develop a catalogue of learning resources on the NHS Learning Hub for primary care professionals to deliver annual checks for people with severe mental illness (SMI). These resources include a free 15-minute e-learning module that explores good practice and the morbidity and mortality issues associated with SMI.
Improving access to physical health checks is highlighted in the NHS Long Term Plan. The aim is to carry out 390,000 checks for people with SMI by 2023/24. For 2021/22, the target is for 302,000 people with SMI to receive a physical health check.
Workforce and education initiatives
New workforce redesign tools to support ICSs
HEE has launched two new resources to support systems with their workforce redesign efforts: the Roles Explorer, a collection of resources for use when introducing new roles to inspire design of optimum skill mix, and the Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) toolkit to support building and developing teams across professional groups and system structures.
HEE Quality Strategy and Framework Refresh
HEE has recently published updated versions of its Quality Strategy and Framework following a comprehensive review. As part of our statutory duties, HEE is responsible for securing continuous improvement in the quality of education and training provided for healthcare workers.
The 2021 HEE Quality Strategy draws on the learning and significant work already undertaken by education and placement providers to deliver excellent education and training and will support and promote safe, supportive and inclusive learning environments.
The 2021 HEE Quality Framework sets out the standards we expect placement providers to meet when delivering healthcare practice placements and training posts. Both the strategy and the framework describe how we will monitor and assess quality, respond to quality concerns and capitalise on good practice, innovation and technology.
The review of the strategy and framework has drawn on the knowledge, experience and expertise of our partners and stakeholders through an extensive process of engagement and co-production. This included bringing together comments and feedback from around four hundred individuals representing a range of key partners. For more information visit the HEE website.
HEE and World Health Organisation – Global Workforce Planning Seminars
In partnership with the World Health Organisation (WHO), we are hosting a series of seminars which will bring together health and care workforce planners from across the world. The seminars will focus on the importance of strengthening the health workforce internationally in support of the WHO Year of the Health and Care Workers (YHCW) programme.
The first of the seminars – An introduction to systemic workforce planning, will be held on Monday 13 December 2021, 09:30 – 10:30 GMT. Attendance is limited to 500 so to be assured of a place, register to join by visiting the HEE website. Three subsequent seminars will be held across 2022.
UK Global Better Health Programme: Case Study for Prosperity Programme
In partnership with colleagues from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the Department for International Trade, HEE and other NHS arm’s length bodies have been working with health system leaders abroad to improve population level health outcomes, particularly those related to non-communicable diseases.
The overall aim of the Better Health Programme is to strengthen local health system structures and improve the quality of care, which in turn will contribute to healthier populations and sector-wide economic growth. UK Global Better Health Programme: Case Study for Prosperity Programme provides examples of how NHS organisations have engaged and collaborated with partner nations to reach shared national and global health goals. Read the full case study here.
New academy to boost knowledge specialists’ learning
HEE is delighted to announce the creation of the new Knowledge for Healthcare Learning Academy. The Academy offers a range of bespoke learning opportunities tailored to the needs of the specialist healthcare knowledge and library workforce in England.
Giving NHS library teams opportunities for enhanced professional development, the Academy will bring together elements of HEE’s current NHS Knowledge and Library Services workforce development offer under a single umbrella. By improving their skills participants will not only be developing themselves but enhancing the already highly valued services provided by knowledge and library professionals to NHS.
The Centre for Advancing Practice Supported ePortfolio Route
The Centre for Advancing Practice Supported ePortfolio Route is designed to enable Practitioners to evidence that they meet the advance practitioner requirements described in the Multi-professional framework for advanced clinical practice in England (MPF).
The online application form for this route will be available via the Advanced Practice website from 13 December 2021 and will remain open until late January 2022.
To support, we have developed a guidance document, and we will also be holding a webinar – join us Monday 6 December at 10am. FAQs will also be added to the website shortly. For further details please visit the HEE website.
Centre for Advancing Practice Conference 2021
The Extraordinary People, Extraordinary Care conference took place last month and was the most successful to date. With over 2000 delegates and 90 speakers from a wide variety of professions. For those who were unable to attend, you can visit the Advanced Practice Conference 2021 page where you will find links to the conference main stage and keynote speeches alongside the workshops from both days of the conference. You can also visit our Youtube channel where you will find all the talks from both days.
eLearning for Healthcare
Keep up to date with all the latest additions to the elfh platform 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.
