We hope this bulletin will be helpful and provides you with a summative overview of all information, documentation, and announcements made by HEE and our partners.

We will be updating this bulletin as further information, documentation, and announcements occur.

Key Messages and links to 5 April 2022

Welcome to Health Education England’s regular stakeholder bulletin. In this bulletin we will provide:

• Latest message from our Chief Executive
• COVID-19 latest updates

• Overview of HEE education and training news

Weekly messages from HEE

Read the recent message from Dr Navina Evans, Chief Executive, HEE:

Strength in tough times

The NHS and our people need to recover from the pandemic, deal with a huge backlog of care, and prepare for longer term challenges such as rising numbers of people with more than one condition, an ageing population, and mainstreaming new technology. That is why HEE has been commissioned to produce a new strategic planning framework to identify the drivers for workforce planning in 2037, including social care for the first time, and why we are building a new organisation with NHS England, NHS Improvement and NHS Digital to align workforce, service, finance, and technology. Read the full article on the HEE website.

 Recommendations for fairer tariff funding

Since April 2021, HEE has assumed greater responsibility for the development of the healthcare education and training placement tariffs. Supported by the Department of Health and Social Care, and NHS England/ Improvement, and other stakeholders’ we have developed recommendations to reform tariff funding across all education and training from September 2022. We are pleased to be at the helm of this work. There is much more to be done, but funding and plans for 22/23 provide a good foundation for us to be collectively ambitious for the future. Visit the HEE website to read Navina’s blog in full.

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.

Lateral flow tests for NHS patient facing staff

From 1 April 2022, NHS patient facing staff should continue to test twice weekly when asymptomatic. Lateral flow tests will continue to be available through the gov.uk portal for NHS staff working in a patient-facing role. Health and care students should ask their NHS employer, or main NHS contact, whether they need to take part in the NHS staff testing programme if they are working in a patient-facing environment – if the answer is yes, they will be able to access tests via gov.uk identifying as NHS staff.

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

Multi-professional

HEE Blended Learning Guidance launched

HEE has launched a comprehensive guide to blended learning for undergraduate education in healthcare across multiple professions.

The guidance includes contributions from across healthcare professions and follows the success of the HEE 2019/20 mandate to explore alternative routes into nursing to widen access and increase the nursing workforce in England. This new blended learning approach now means the NHS and partners can widen access and participation for training and education and promote diversity and inclusion in the wider healthcare workforce. To read the report click here. For more information about Blended Learning, email: blendedlearning@hee.nhs.uk.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion National Learner Assembly – Save the Date!

The second EDI National Learner Assembly will be held this year on 27 May 9.30am-4.30pm. The free to attend, full day online event will be chaired by learners, for learners, in collaboration with senior leaders at HEE to address concerns and share best practice to enable change. Keynote speakers include HEE Chief Executive Dr Navina Evans and North East Postgraduate Dean Prof. Namita Kumar.

Keep a look out as sign up instructions and full agenda will follow soon.

Medical

Launch of enhance: Enhancing Generalist Skills programme

HEE has recently launched the enhance: Enhancing Generalist Skills programme. This programme details how HEE will deliver the recommendations from the Future Doctor report and build on learning from the pandemic. The programme will help healthcare teams preserve and develop their generalist skills, supporting ‘whole person’ care for complex patients with multiple chronic conditions, and applying knowledge and learning to reduce health inequalities to address local health priorities. Our new programme handbook outlines the background to the work and expectations of participants, with a structure to guide learning activities that can meet the programme’s outcomes. Find out more about the programme and download our handbook.

Did you take part in the review of the Core Skills Training Framework (CSTF)?

HEE recently undertook a root and branch review of the CSTF which included the first ever online surveys asking NHS staff and People Professionals in England for their views on their statutory and mandatory training experience. We received over 2,000 responses.  The Core Skills Training Framework (CSTF) surveys have helped HEE to better understand users’ views on what’s working well with the framework and what could be improved and has been used to inform conversations and planning regarding reforms to statutory and mandatory training in England.

To read a summary report and slide pack of the findings and recommendations of the CSTF Review, see highlights from the surveys, understand the next steps for 2022/2023 and how to get involved in the next stage of this important work please visit the Enabling Staff Movement page of the website.

Doctors returning to training supported in escalating concerns and speaking up

HEE’s SuppoRTT team have developed a virtual reality (VR) resource for doctors returning to training, which uses a clinical scenario to explore the topic of Escalating Concerns and Speaking Up, skills that are increasingly recognised as contributing to the quality and safety of care for patients. Learners will explore techniques and develop skills in a safe, virtual environment. To learn more, watch this short promotional video.

Visit the SuppoRTT catalogue page in the NHS Learning Hub to access the resource.

Allied health professions

AHP Faculty Toolkit

An AHP Faculty Toolkit has been created as a resource, in response to feedback on key resources, to support those wanting to establish a Faculty or wanting to improve the effectiveness of an existing AHP Faculty. Read more on the HEE website.

Pharmacy

Pharmacy survey on genomics knowledge and training opportunities

We would like to invite all pharmacy staff to complete a short survey on your current practice and training requests in relation to genomics. The survey can be completed online at https://poll.hee.nhs.uk/s/GenomicsInPharmacy. The survey is open to all pharmacy staff, including pharmacy technicians, pharmacists and dispensers, assistants and support staff.

Workforce and education initiatives
New guidance for nursing on what good looks like

The What Good Looks Like (WGLL) framework sets out an ambitious, common vision across seven success measures for digital transformation. The nursing profession is in a unique place to support the realisation of this vision and lead the work collaboratively across the health and social care system.

This new guidance, developed with nurses across health and social care, supports nursing leaders in applying the WGLL principles as part of your ICS or organisation’s digital transformation journey. Further supporting resources, including how to put the guidance into practice, are available on the Digital Nursing Resources FutureNHS workspace.

Year of the Digital Profession / Digital and Data awards

NHS England and NHS improvement has launched the Year of the Digital Profession, an initiative committed to building a workforce of informatics experts in health and social care to meet the demands of the sector. A key moment for the year is the launch of the Digital and Data Awards which will recognise the achievements of individuals who work within a digital, data, technology or informatics role, either as their appointed role or as part of their clinical or professional role working in health and care.  The awards are open to clinicians and professionals. Celebrate your colleague’s work and enter here.

Consultation open for Biomedical Scientist (Degree) apprenticeship

Apprenticeship Standards describe the high-level knowledge, skills and behaviours required to carry out a defined occupation. The Biomedical Scientist Trailblazer Group have opened a consultation on the draft apprenticeship standard for the Level 6 Biomedical Scientist. The consultation will be available until 12pm on 13th April 2022. All feedback will be reviewed following the closing date and the Trailblazer will consider where amendments should be made to the draft standards. The Standards will then be submitted to the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) to seek approval. Click this link to access the consultation for the Biomedical Scientist apprenticeship standard.

The Future of Healthcare Work Experience: Discovery Report

HEE is committed to working with partners to improve the work experience and work-related learning offer to all our communities, for the benefit of individuals, health and care employers, patients and service users.

Following the release of The Future of Healthcare Work Experience: Discovery Report in 2021, we have now published a response to this document, which outlines in practical terms how we are working with partner organisations to take its recommendations forward. You can view The report and the response paper on the HEE website.

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.

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. 

We hope this bulletin will be helpful and provides you with a summative overview of all information, documentation, and announcements made by HEE and our partners.

We will be updating this bulletin as further information, documentation, and announcements occur.

Key Messages and links to 17 March 2022

Welcome to Health Education England’s regular stakeholder bulletin. In this bulletin we will provide:

• COVID-19 latest updates
• Overview of HEE education and training news

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.

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

Medical

Training in the independent sector for NHS doctors

HEE has launched new communications tools to raise awareness of the option for doctors in training to gain additional practical experience within an independent sector provider, whilst caring for NHS patients.  The NHS is committed to the training of its workforce and with the COVID-19 pandemic, this is more important than ever. Training recovery and education need to be flexible.

These opportunities are open to all doctors in training within a recognised specialty training programme but will be of particular interest for surgical, medical, ophthalmology and anaesthesia doctors in training. An animation and infographic give details of how to gain access and explains educational governance, accountability and indemnity. You can view the new resources on the independent sector pages of the HEE website.

enhance: Enhancing Generalist Skills

Health Education England has recently launched the enhance: Enhancing Generalist Skills programme. This programme details how HEE will deliver the recommendations from the Future Doctor report and build on learning from the pandemic. The programme will help doctors preserve and develop their generalist skills, supporting ‘whole person’ care for complex patients with multiple chronic conditions, and applying knowledge and learning to reduce health inequalities to address local health priorities.

Our programme handbook outlines the background to the work, and, expectations of participants, with a structure to guide learning activities that can meet the programme’s outcomes.

You can find out more about the programme and download our handbook here: https://www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/enhancing-generalist-skills

AHP

“Continue the Conversation” campaign for the Allied Health Professions’ Research and Innovation Strategy for England

For AHPs of all career stages – join us for this lunchtime webinar. Part of a series, this event aims to focus on a more in-depth reflection of the aims and objectives of the national strategy that was published in January 2022. This first session will focus on transformation of AHP professional identities, culture and roles. Registration information is available on our website.

Mental health

Developing Practice-Based Learning in Mental Health and Learning Disability Settings for the Allied Health Professions

This guide highlights the benefits and opportunities of practice-based learning (PBL) through placements in mental health and learning disability settings for Allied Health Professions (AHP) students, focusing particularly on the professions most common in these settings.

The ideas and examples show how placements have been developed in these settings and highlight the benefits to students, education and placement providers. Ultimately, these placements offer most benefit to patients, service users and families who receive holistic support for their health and care needs offered by the different Allied Health Professions. Read more and access the guide on the HEE website.

Pharmacy

Foundation training year: e-portfolio orientation workshops

As part of ongoing engagement with trainee pharmacists and their supervisors, we continue to run workshops across England to provide an overview of the new foundation training year e-portfolio functionalities with a Q&A session. Please see the upcoming dates on our website and click the link to join. Recordings from past webinars are available on the Royal Pharmaceutical Society website.  

Mental health specialist pathway

In 2019, HEE launched a scheme which, as part of a multi-disciplinary community based mental health team, aims to train 260 Specialist Mental Health Pharmacists by 2024. The first 50 pharmacists will begin a year-long training to become specialist mental health pharmacists at University of Bradford in the Spring of 2022. The Pharmaceutical Journal published earlier this month provides further information.

A webinar on Opportunities for Specialist Mental Health Pharmacists in Community Mental Health took place on 25 January 2022. The slides and recording have now been uploaded to the NHS Future Collaboration platform. To gain access to the platform, please email england.adultmh@nhs.net.

Workforce and education initiatives

Shared commitment to maximise digital knowledge resources for the NHS in England
To create a future-ready NHS we need to bridge the gap between evidence, knowledge and frontline care. Healthcare is a knowledge-intensive industry so using the right evidence at the right time is critical for patient care and productivity.

Spearheaded by HEE, health and care Arm’s Length Bodies in England which take a leading role in producing and publishing evidence, information and knowledge, have agreed a concordat. This complements the partnership agreements which already exist between our organisations.

Year of the Digital Profession

NHS England and NHS Improvement has launched the Year of the Digital Profession, an initiative committed to building a workforce of informatics experts in health and social care to meet the demands of the sector. A key moment for the year is the launch of the Digital and Data Awards which will recognise the achievements of individuals who work within a digital, data, technology or informatics role, either as their appointed role or as part of their clinical or professional role working in health and care.  The awards are open to clinicians and professionals. Celebrate your colleague’s work and enter here.

Still time to apply for Cohort 5 of the Digital Health Leadership Programme

The NHS Digital Academy’s Digital Health Leadership Programme is a fully accredited 12-month Postgraduate Diploma delivered by Imperial College London. Applications from those employed in England are open from 22 February to 24 March for the next cohort of digital leaders. Learn more about the application process and apply.

Help us ‘level up’ digital leadership development support for independent community health service (CHS) providers

NHS England and Improvement, HEE, The Independent Healthcare Providers Network and Social Enterprise UK are working together to understand the challenges to digital leadership development and explore solutions such as the delivery of a bespoke offer for CHS leaders. To share your views please complete this questionnaire before 23 March.

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.

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 8 March 2022

Welcome to Health Education England’s regular stakeholder bulletin. In this bulletin we will provide:

• Latest message from our Chief Executive
• COVID-19 latest updates
• Overview of HEE education and training news

Weekly messages from HEE

Read the recent message from Dr Navina Evans, Chief Executive, HEE:

The challenge of workforce planning

Ask anyone in health and care sectors what the major challenge is and workforce will be the answer. Then ask the same people what should be done, and their answer is better planning. The real answer is transparent, cooperative, funded social care integrated planning with interventions matched to deliverable timelines. The health and care system needs to work as a collective force for good. To this end, HEE is working with partners to ensure the system has the data, expertise, analysis, and tools to make plans feasible; the service, finance, and workforce alignment to make them tenable; and logical, effective delivery time frames to make them workable. Visit the HEE website to read Navina’s blog in full.

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.

Previous guidance from the NHS regarding deployment of NHS staff from 1 April 2022 has now been paused, as explained in a letter issued from the NHS.

To see the full HEE letter, dated 2 February 2022, please visit the HEE website.

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

Medical

NTEF Insight Event:Greener NHS and Sustainability – Wednesday 16 March 7pm – 8pm

The next National Trainee Engagement Forum (NTEF) Insight Event will take place on Wednesday 16 March at 7pm on the theme of Greener NHS and Sustainability. The climate crisis is also a health crisis – but what role does the NHS have to play?

We will hear from two prominent healthcare leaders who will provide their insights and expertise in this field: Dr Nick Watts, Chief Sustainability Officer of the NHS and Dr Tim Ferris, National Director of Transformation at NHS England and NHS Improvement, with opening and closing remarks from Dr Navina Evans, Chief Executive HEE and Professor Wendy Reid, Director of Education & Quality and Medical Director HEE. This is a free and open event hosted by Health Education England and will take place virtually as a livestream MS Teams webinar on Wednesday 16 March 19.00-20.00. Link to join event here

Mental health

Developing Practice-Based Learning in Mental Health and Learning Disability Settings for the Allied Health Professions

This guide highlights the benefits and opportunities of practice-based learning (PBL) through placements in mental health and learning disability settings for Allied Health Professions (AHP) students, focusing particularly on the professions most common in these settings.

The ideas and examples show how placements have been developed in these settings and highlight the benefits to students, education and placement providers. Ultimately, these placements offer most benefit to patients, service users and families who receive holistic support for their health and care needs offered by the different Allied Health Professions. Read more and access the guide on the HEE website.

Pharmacy

Pharmacist Education Summit: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

Over 200 delegates attended our joint pharmacist education summit with the Pharmacy Schools Council last week, focusing on equality, diversity and inclusion. The sessions provided a route for many to highlight emerging good practice and resources, and the keynote presentation by Professor Ijeoma Uchegbu was a powerful call to action.

Delegates committed to developing as allies, listening, and being more active in taking the steps to create a change. We are working with the Pharmacy Schools Council to share resources from the event. In the meantime, find out more in this news item from the Pharmacists’ Defence Association (PDA).

Workforce and education initiatives

Digital Health Leadership Programme Cohort 5 applications

Applications for the NHS Digital Academy’s Digital Health Leadership Programme are open to applicants employed in England from 22 February – 24 March for the next cohort of digital change leaders.

The Digital Health Leadership Programme is a fully accredited 12 month fully accredited Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Health Leadership delivered by Imperial College London and partners through a blend of online and in-person learning methods. All components of the programme will be highly engaging for participants supporting both individual learning and creating a vibrant community of digital leaders.

To support applications to the new cohort, the NHS Digital Academy are running a series of webinars and drop-in sessions where you can gain more information about the assessment criteria and sponsorship requirements. Learn more about the application process and apply.

HEE launches new resource to help treat rare diseases

To mark Rare Disease Day in February, HEE launched a new online education hub to improve the diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases.

It comes as the government launches the first Rare Diseases Action Plan – devised jointly with HEE and other partners – to improve the prospects for patients with more than 7,000 rare conditions. The HEE hub, which is aimed at a wide variety of health professionals, features stories from patients and signposts to other useful educational resources. It can be accessed on the genomics section of the HEE website.

New Work Experience Resource Catalogue

The National Work Experience Resource Catalogue is a repository of resources that can be shared to all health and social care colleagues to support the development and delivery of online work-related learning content. Organisations and individuals can submit resources they use in order to share them with others. Anything that provides a deeper understanding of the skills and knowledge required in the workplace for any of the 350 NHS careers (with clear learning outcomes such as, skills events, simulation, demonstrations, scenarios, and Technology Enhanced Learning TEL) can be included.

To access the resource please log in through the Learning Hub and search “Work Experience Resources” at the top of the screen where it says, ‘Search the Learning Hub’. Specific resources can be accessed using the search engine at the top of the catalogue. To share a resource, please submit through this Submission Form.

HEE has created some User Guidelines of principles and attributes to consider when submitting and or using content sourced from the catalogue, this can be found on the description of the Resource Catalogue, or via the link above.

elearning for healthcare reaches new milestone

HEE has reached the milestone of 500 online learning programmes to help educate and train the health and care workforce. The resources cover everything from substance misuse and midwifery to emergency medicine and end-of-life care.

So far more than 81 training sessions have been launched on the elearning for healthcare (elfh) hub. In all, more than 34,000 sessions are available to access, and more than 13 million hours of learning time have been completed. 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.

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 18 February 2022

Welcome to Health Education England’s regular stakeholder bulletin. In this bulletin we will provide:

• Latest message from our Chief Executive
• COVID-19 latest updates
• Overview of HEE education and training news

Weekly messages from HEE

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

Why is global learning so vital

Never has the need for us to recognise and promote ‘global learning’ been starker as we emerge from the single biggest global health crisis that all of us have faced in our lifetimes.  At HEE, as the largest education, training and workforce planning organisation for healthcare in the world, we are in a particular position of influence and our people have unique experience in building and developing the right workforce.

Evidence demonstrates that when a healthcare worker moves into another care system, wherever in the world that is, they learn. Not only do they learn, but they develop skills which are hugely important in the NHS – things like resourcefulness, intercultural skills, resilience and team building. Visit the HEE website to read Navina’s blog in full.

Apprenticeships offer routes into more than 350 NHS careers

Our apprentices make a huge contribution to the delivery of essential services across the NHS in front line clinical and non-clinical roles. Health apprenticeships are continually expanding across all professions at all levels, and include areas such as nursing, advanced clinical practice, senior healthcare support, medical engineering, pharmacy and business administration to name a few.

More than 24,500 apprentices started training in 178 different apprenticeship standards across the NHS, in 2020/21 – a rise of 20% since 2019/20 and the largest ever number per year. Visit the HEE website to read Navina’s blog in full.

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.

Previous guidance from the NHS regarding deployment of NHS staff from 1 April 2022 has now been paused, as explained in a letter issued from the NHS.

To see the full HEE letter, dated 2 February 2022, please visit the HEE website.

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

Multi-professional

Advancing Practice stakeholder engagement

HEE is seeking to engage stakeholders on The Centre for Advancing Practice’s approach to multi-professional advanced practice credentials. This is ahead of the Centre’s full credential approval and assurance process being launched in 2022. The exercise runs to 28 February 2022. You can read a briefing document that explains the Centre’s approach, as well as accessing an online platform for providing feedback.

Medical

New report published – The F3 phenomenon: exploring a new norm and its implications

Over recent years we have seen an increase in the number of junior doctors choosing to take a break from training following completion of the Foundation Programme. This is often to work in a non-training post and the vast majority have returned to training at a later date. As this new report identifies, there are numerous factors in why doctors choose to take this break, and the reasons are shaped by the interaction between different personal and professional circumstances.

This programme of work, run jointly with the Royal College of Physicians, was commissioned to build our understanding of what has been referred to as “the F3 phenomenon”, and what it means for individual doctors and for postgraduate training. This report confirms what we have observed: taking a break from training post foundation is becoming increasingly common. The increased understanding the report brings will help the HEE Medical Education Reform Programme to ensure doctors are adequately supported in their careers and attracted into training programmes through our work to individualise training and to increase training flexibility. Read the full report here.

Mental health

Virtual Community of Practice of current and aspiring Advanced Practitioners in mental health

Advanced Practitioners in mental health work within a multi-disciplinary team to take a holistic approach to a patient’s care. In 2020 HEE launched its Multi-professional Advanced Practice Mental Health curriculum and capabilities framework and several early adopter sites are now delivering its content.

An Advanced Community of Practice in Mental Health has now been launched. The free to join facility, funded by HEE’s Centre of Advancing Practice is a place where, aspiring, trainee and qualified Advanced Practitioners in mental health can go to get advice, peer support and to share best practice and will offer members the opportunity to influence the development of advanced practice roles. Four virtual events are planned alongside the 24/7 community platform. The Community of Practice is currently in pilot form, for more information, to register for the events and to become a member visit the community of practice website.

Pharmacy

Funded places available before March 2022: Independent Prescriber Training

As part of emerging NHS Pharmacy Integration Programme education and training development offers, funded places are available for Independent Prescribing before March 2022.

This is an initial offer for pharmacists who are already in a position to apply and meet the eligibility criteria, and meets the requirement to progress this training as early as possible for community pharmacists and employers who have signalled they are ready to proceed.

For those pharmacists who are not in a position to apply for this offer, we would encourage you to prepare to apply for the main round of funded Independent Prescriber training that will be available from Autumn 2022. Find out more about this offer and eligibility criteria. 

Summer 2023 trainee foundation trainees

A reminder that employer applications are now being invited for the next round of the National Foundation Trainee Pharmacist Recruitment Scheme via Oriel.

Recruitment will take place in September-October 2022 for trainees beginning their Foundation training in Summer 2023. The deadline for employers to register to recruit via the National Recruitment Scheme and submit programme information for the 2023-24 cohort is Tuesday 1 March 2022. More information here

Workforce and education initiatives

HEE publishes roadmap into use of AI in the NHS
We have published the first roadmap to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the NHS looking at its workforce impact.

The report aims to understand the use of AI and data-driven technologies that currently exist in the healthcare system, the uptake of these new technologies and the impact on the workforce. This specifically looks at how long AI projects will take to implement, how the different types of technology are distributed throughout the health service, what clinical areas are using AI and which parts of the workforce use AI the most. Find out more on the HEE website.

Refugee and asylum seeker healthcare professionals’ experiences of working in the NHS

A new research project aims to investigate the challenges which refugees and asylum seeker healthcare professionals (RASHPs) face when entering and working in the NHS. HEE is inviting any health professional in the UK who is currently, or has previously, held refugee and asylum seeker status to complete a short survey on their NHS transition or working experiences. The survey can be found here and closes on 28 February 2022.

Healthcare Science Week 14 to 20 March 2022

Healthcare Science Week is an annual week of celebration and awareness-raising for the many careers in healthcare science and gives us the opportunity to promote the amazing work of healthcare science professionals and highlight the difference they make to patients’ lives. Healthcare Science Week will take place 14 to 20 March 2022.

You can help us celebrate HCS Week by joining the conversation throughout the week on social media, using the hashtag #HCSWeek2022 and following us @NSHCS – please retweet and like our posts throughout the week. If you know anyone who works in a healthcare science profession, either personally or professionally, then celebrate their work with a social media message post of your own. Please remember to include the hashtag #HCSWeek2022.

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.

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 2^nd February 2022

Welcome to Health Education England’s regular stakeholder bulletin. In this bulletin we will provide:

• Latest message from our Chief Executive
• COVID-19 latest updates
• Overview of HEE education and training news

Weekly messages from HEE

Read the recent message from Dr Navina Evans, Chief Executive, HEE:

‘A new organisation’

I am keen to update you on our work to bring together Health Education England, NHS Digital, NHSX, and NHS England and NHS Improvement into a new single organisation.

The legal merger of our organisations is subject to Parliament’s approval of the Health and Care Bill, and subsequent secondary legislation. In the meantime, we will continue to work more closely together.

Much of what we are already doing as part of our work to develop a long-term strategic framework for the health and care workforce will depend on creating an organisation which is fit for purpose and future proofed to deliver both now and in the years ahead.

To read more of Navina’s blog please visit 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.

Previous guidance from the NHS regarding deployment of NHS staff from 1 April 2022 has now been paused, as explained in a letter issued from the NHS.

To see the full HEE letter, dated 2 February 2022, please visit the HEE website.

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

Medical and dental

HEE makes strides to address equality, diversion and inclusion

Health Education England is pressing forward with a strong plan of action to address diversity and inclusion in postgraduate medical education and training.

Details are revealed in the first annual report of the HEE Deans Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, which was formed in 2020.

More information and full details of the report can be found on the HEE website.

Extended Surgical Team (EST) pilot

The Health Education England Extended Surgical Team (EST) pilot commenced in November 2020 and was aimed at new ‘extended’ surgical teams, which included consultants, doctors in training and SAS doctors, but the focus of the pilot was the role of multi professional team members. HEE supported the development of pilot sites to explore the development of the EST in new areas to both improve workforce provision and enable improvement provision of surgical training.

A report outlining the findings of the pilot, The Health Education England Extended Surgical Teams (HEEEST) Pilot: Year 1 Report, is now available.

Mental Health

Mental health clinical support worker toolkit launched

Providers of mental health services are working to meet the NHS Long Term Plan ambition of increasing the number of additional mental health clinical support staff by over 6,000, in order to provide services to two million more people in need of care by 2023/24.

To help organisations put this in place Health Education England with National Workforce Skills Development Unit and partners has created a toolkit which brings together resources, guidance, case studies and examples of best practice. The areas the toolkit covers are workforce planning, recruitment, induction, day to day management, learning and development and career planning. To find out more and view the toolkit, visit the HEE mental health webpage.

Primary care SMI physical health checks learning catalogue

Health Education England has worked jointly with NHS England and NHS Improvement to develop a catalogue of learning resources to support primary care professionals to deliver annual checks for people with severe mental illness (SMI) as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan. These learning resources are now available on the NHS Learning Hub and include a free 15-minute e-learning module that explores the morbidity and mortality issues associated with SMI, and highlight physical health checks good practice.

People with an SMI are at risk of dying prematurely, in some cases 20 years earlier than the general population. Many of these deaths are preventable if conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes and cardiovascular problems are identified and treated early through psychical health checks.

AHPs

AHP Support Workforce Webinar – Radiography Support Worker

This is now available on the HEE website

Allied Health Professions’ Research and Innovation Strategy for England

This Strategy comprises a definitive collective national reference statement that encompasses and supports the existing research and innovation strategies of all the Allied Health professional associations. For more information and to read the strategy please click here.

Workforce and education initiatives

Healthcare evidence and knowledge now a simple search away

Health Education England (HEE) has launched a new online search platform to give NHS staff and learners access to the latest research findings along with decades of published evidence – all in one place.

The NHS Knowledge and Library Hub is a ‘one-stop’ national gateway which, for the first time nationally, connects staff and learners seamlessly to a wide range of knowledge and evidence resources, services and databases – bought on their behalf by the NHS. Visit the HEE website for more information.

The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training in Learning Disability and Autism

On 1 December Gillian Keegan the Minister of State for Care and Mental Health opened our

fourth stakeholder event for the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training in Learning Disability

and Autism.

We were delighted that nearly 600 people were able to attend the event. Our delivery partners Bild, Gloucestershire Health and Care NHSFT, and Mencap, shared their updates and we explored the evaluators interim report.

You can read the report here and the Easy Read version here.

In the spring we will receive a final report from the independent evaluator (NDTi) that will inform the rollout plans for Oliver’s training to the health and social care workforce.

More information can be found on the Health Education England website

Work Experience Toolkits

Following the publication of The Future of Healthcare Work Experience Discovery Report in August 2021, HEE has revised and relaunched its four existing work experience toolkits, for use by those working in general practice settings, dental practices, secondary care and for teachers and careers advisors. HEE has also made available an additional toolkit to assist those putting in place online work-related learning programmes.

The toolkits include forms and templates that can be used for your work experience programme – as well as links to the latest work experience resources and up-to-date opportunities. The toolkits can be found here.

For more information about work experience and pre-employment activity click here.

Shared commitment to maximise digital knowledge resources for the NHS

An important concordat has been agreed by all the six leading health and care Arm’s Length Bodies in England this month.

In signing the concordat, all the organisations have committed to ensure healthcare and public health are underpinned by evidence from research, and that investment in digital resources on behalf of the NHS is coordinated to maximise the benefits for the workforce, patients and taxpayers.

Orchestrated by Health Education England, the new concordat complements the partnership agreements which already exists between our organisations.  Signed by Health Education England, NHS England and NHS Improvement, NHS Digital, Care Quality Commission, and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the UK Health Security Agency and endorsed by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) this is an important step forward.

For more information, please email kfh.england@hee.nhs.uk

elearning for healthcare

Keep up to date with the latest additions to the elfh hub by visiting the news page.

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 21 January 2022

Welcome to Health Education England’s regular stakeholder bulletin. In this bulletin we will provide:

• COVID-19 latest updates
• Overview of HEE education and training news

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.

Vaccination as a Condition of Deployment: frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions (FAQ) for Pre-registration Nursing and Midwifery and Allied Health Profession Students have been published on the HEE website.

This FAQ has been developed to respond to some of the questions asked by students in relation to vaccination as a condition of deployment. This is a live FAQ and will be reviewed and updated in order to provide advice and guidance. We will continue to work with the Council of Deans of Health who are also looking at a number of issues and plan to offer some support and information.

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

Nursing

Pandemic inspires ‘future nurses’ with a welcome increase in school and college leavers looking to enter the profession

A record number of 18-year-olds applied to study nursing in England in 2021, with the COVID pandemic playing a significant factor in their decision to apply, according to a new UCAS report published today in collaboration with HEE.

This has been accompanied by an overall rise in the number of nursing applicants across all ages, with a record 28,815 choosing a nursing course in England as their first choice through UCAS. The pandemic has shone a positive spotlight on the profession and raised the public profile of nursing. This, together with the introduction of the Learning Support Fund, promotion of nursing careers through the award-winning We are the NHS campaign, and an investment of £55 million into practice placements, has contributed to the increase in applications to study nursing. Read more on the HEE website.

AHPs

Newly trained mammographers boost breast screening workforce

A HEE-funded training programme to boost the breast screening workforce is celebrating its first 50 new apprentices. The newly qualified mammographers are now working in the NHS Breast Screening Programme and breast units.  Another 70 apprentices are already in training and will qualify over the next two years, with further intakes planned.

The apprenticeship is part of a comprehensive programme of training, recruitment and career development aimed at tackling the national workforce shortages in NHS breast imaging and is funded by Health Education England. To find out more, visit the National Breast Imaging Academy website.

Allied Health Professions’ Research and Innovation Strategy coming soon!

This strategy will set out a bold strategic vision to support and accelerate the research and innovation agenda for all the Allied Health disciplines and will provide a framework to drive transformational impact for AHP research and innovation, specifically for enhanced visibility, reputation, influence and impact on services.

This Strategy has been developed in a co-production approach, working closely with the research leads of the 14 Allied Health professional associations, as well as a wide range of other key stakeholders. Join us for the launch at our “Breakfast Broadcast”. Weds 26 Jan 9.30am – 10.15am. Register here.

New guidance for diagnostic imaging support worker roles

We have published guidance, in collaboration with the Society of Radiographers, to maximise the contribution of the diagnostic imaging support workforce to deliver safe and effective care.

The guidance sets out roles and responsibilities for diagnostic imaging support workers, including assistant practitioners, at four career levels. It provides additional, profession-specific competencies that complement the AHP Support Worker Competency, Education and Career Development Framework. The guidance will enable services to develop and deploy support workers effectively to meet patient needs and service demand in the context of the Richards’ review and development of imaging pathways. Access the guidance on the HEE website.

Mental health

NHS Talking Therapies campaign

NHS England and NHS Improvement has launched a new mental health campaign to highlight that feelings of anxiety and depression can affect us all – and the NHS is there to help. The NHS provides a range of talking therapies for common mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, which are free, effective and confidential.

Famous faces from across music and radio, including Craig David, Tom Grennan, Laura Mvula, Nicola Roberts, Ella Henderson, Max George, as well as an NHS therapist and real people who have benefited from the NHS mental health Talking Therapy services are supporting the campaign in a powerful new video featuring the lyrics of the Beatles’ song ‘Help!’, which calls on people who are struggling to reach out for support through NHS services – either by referring themselves, or by contacting their GP practice who can also refer them. Visit nhs.uk/help for more information.

Pharmacy

Community pharmacists contribute to workforce survey

Community pharmacy across England has contributed valuable information to a workforce survey which gathers information on staff numbers and skills to help plan the future workforce.

HEE, working with NHS England and NHS Improvement, commissioned the Community Pharmacy Workforce Survey (2021) across England to understand how the size and make-up of the community pharmacy workforce has changed since the last survey was conducted in 2017. It provides a snapshot of the community pharmacy workforce in spring 2021 and will help HEE and partners to inform future planning and investment decisions. Read more on the HEE website.

Newly Qualified Pharmacist pathway

This new (optional) pathway is designed for learners across all sectors of pharmacy, to help them meet their development needs as they enter newly qualified practice.

The pathway aims to link the initial education and training reforms to a continuum of post-registration development. It is also intended to help pharmacists make the transition to more independent learning, and to act as a stepping-stone towards advanced practice. Find out more about funded support and how to register on our website.

Summer 2023 trainee foundation trainees

A reminder that employer applications are now being invited for the next round of the National Foundation Trainee Pharmacist Recruitment Scheme via Oriel.

Recruitment will take place in September-October 2022 for trainees beginning their Foundation training in Summer 2023. The deadline for employers to register to recruit via the National Recruitment Scheme and submit programme information for the 2023-24 cohort is Tuesday 1 March 2022. More information here

Workforce and education initiatives

Applications for the Scientist Training Programme open until 1 February 2022

The Scientist Training Programme (STP) is a three-year training programme that includes work-based and academic learning. Whilst on the programme trainees will also complete a part-time master’s degree at the university offering the chosen specialism. Trainees will complete the programme and be employed at a local level by an NHS Trust in England on a fixed term training contract salaried at AfC band 6. Click here for more information for anyone interested in applying to the Scientist Training Programme. Applications close on Tuesday, 1 February at 4pm.

Our Health Heroes Awards 2022 finalists announced

The unsung heroes of the NHS have their chance to shine at the Our Health Heroes Awards which celebrates the wider healthcare workers who support NHS doctors and nurses on the frontline.

Sponsored by HEE, the awards are open to NHS staff from porters and cleaners to receptionists, gardeners, and security guards, who make up roughly 40% of the NHS’ million strong workforce. Our finalists have done some remarkable work, now it’s up to you to help recognise and shine a light on them; voting is now open on the Skills for Health website.

DART-Ed webinar – Building appropriate confidence in AI to enable safe and ethical adoption

Join the second in HEE’s Digital, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Technologies in Education (DART-Ed) webinar series looking at how safe, effective, ethical adoption of AI technology in healthcare relies on clinician confidence, and how this can be built. The session takes place on 1 Feb 2022. Sign up for a place.

Fellowships in Clinical Artificial Intelligence

We’re pleased to announce the first Fellowships in Clinical Artificial Intelligence, alongside the London AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare. The post duration is 1 year at 2 days/wk, beginning in May 2022. It is open to specialty trainees in the London region and Kent Surrey Sussex region. These fellowships are funded and supported by Health Education England. The deadline for applications is 30th January 2022.

Fellows will gain expertise in Clinical Artificial Intelligence (AI) in an integrated pathway alongside their specialty training and implement ground-breaking work in the use of state-of-the-art AI software in live hospital environments.

For more information: News (aicentre.co.uk)

Health Innovation Placement (HIP) Pilot – applications now open

This new offering from Health Education England provides NHS leaders of all levels and professions with an exciting opportunity to develop through exposure with start-ups and small-medium organisations (SMEs), with the aim of leading on the development of a technological solution to a specific NHS problem. Find out more.

Wondering about BMJ Best Practice?

Want to understand more on how to get the best out of this award-winning, clinical decision-making tool?  It is free to the NHS in England thanks to our HEE funding! So why not take just 30 mins to ask questions, find out how to sign up then navigate the resource that is available on desktop and mobile app, on or offline, 24/7.

Book today – places available now!

e-Learning for Health

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.

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 7 January 2022

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
• An update from your regional office

Chief Executive updates

New Year message from Dr Navina Evans
We enter 2022 with the NHS facing unprecedented demand. It truly is a winter like no other. The past two years have taken, and continue to have, an inevitable strain on our NHS people and our health and care learners across all professions, whose training and education is a key part of NHS service delivery and frontline patient care every single day.

The pandemic has had a huge impact on us all both personally and professionally. Our learners have been at the forefront of the NHS COVID response with doctors in training and placement student nurses, midwives, AHPs and healthcare scientists, caring for patients whilst doing everything they can to keep their training and education on track to ensure they can continue to progress with their careers safely and enter the workforce on time to safeguard supply.

Our health and care learners, educators and partners in training and education delivery should be incredibly proud of their personal and collective contributions. Vince Lombardi, the former American football coach, said, ‘The measure of who we are, is what we do with what we have,’ and he was right. I can only continue to repeat our gratitude for all that you do. 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.

COVID Vaccination

Health Education England (HEE) is encouraging all health and care trainees, students and learners, to ensure they have had both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine unless they are medically exempt.

The recent amendments to The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 (“the 2014 Regulations”) require all colleagues over 18, who have direct, face to face contact with service users to evidence that they have received a complete course of an approved COVID-19 vaccine, subject to limited exceptions, by no later than 1 April 2022.
This means that all students on placements in any CQC regulated service will need to be fully vaccinated by 1 April 2022. In practical terms this means all those who have yet to be fully vaccinated and who are not exempt will need to have their first vaccination by 3 February 2022 in order to receive their second dose by 31 March 2022.
Please see below for key dates:

• 6 January – Regulations made. Start of 12-week grace period
• 3 February – 8 weeks before regulations are enforced (and the period required between the first and second vaccination dose).
• 1 April – Regulations enforced. All staff in scope must be fully vaccinated or have secured a medical exemption.

HEE is working with the Council of Deans for Health and others to develop a set of FAQs to support students and universities over the coming weeks.

Book your coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccination

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

Multi-Disciplinary Updates

A new e-Portfolio for Advanced Practitioners launched

A supported e-Portfolio route for advanced practitioners has been launched to enable the education and training of Advanced Practitioners. It has been recognised by the Centre for Advancing Practice and will help individuals working in advanced practice roles to be supported in evidencing their advanced clinical practice. It will also give practitioners the opportunity to identify any gaps in their learning and to potentially be offered further learning opportunities to help close these gaps.  Read more on the HEE advancing practice website.

Medical

Less than Full Time (LTFT) training webinars

A series of three webinars are being held in mid-January for doctors in training who may be interested in the option of Less than Full Time training. The webinars will provide an introduction to LTFT training, discuss the trainee perspective of the LTFT experience and give the opportunity to ask questions. Recent research has shown that Less than Full Time training can impact very positively on trainees; for example 78% of trainees reported a positive impact on their sense of work/life balance.

The three webinars will be broadly the same presentations, but will feature different speakers and are at different times of the day to enable as many trainees as possible to watch. We are taking questions in advance of the webinars, as well as live Q&As during the events.

• Link to ask questions in advance.
• Link to join LTFT webinar 1: Tuesday 18 January 13.00 – 14.00
• Link to join LTFT webinar 2: Wednesday 19 January 19.00 – 20.00
• Link to join LTFT webinar 3: Thursday 20 January 19.00 – 20.00 

Mental health

Psychological Professions Workforce Plan for England

HEE has published the Psychological Professions Workforce Plan for England. The plan aims to support local systems to meet the requirement to deliver growth in the psychological professions workforce by over 60 per cent and make use of the diverse roles available to deliver services, as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.

HEE and NHS England and Improvement are now working with partners across health and care systems locally, regionally and nationally to make this a reality and this plan will facilitate the required actions by all stakeholders. For more information and to view the plan click here.

Workforce and education initiatives

Healthcare evidence and knowledge now a simple search away

The new, HEE funded, NHS Knowledge and Library Hub, is a ‘one-stop’ gateway which, for the first time nationally, connects NHS staff and learners seamlessly to a significant range of free, high-quality knowledge and evidence resources, services, tools and databases, all in one place.

Content of the easy-to-use platform includes over 7,000 journals, e-books – including OUP handbooks, clinical decision support tools – such as BMJ Best Practice, NICE pathways and guidelines and clinical and medical databases.

Accessed via OpenAthens, users will be able to tap into the same system wherever their career takes them.  Start your search or learn more through our short user guides. Updates will be posted on our new Twitter channel – follow us @NHSKFH

Building appropriate confidence in AI to enable safe and ethical adoption

Join the second in our Digital, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Technologies in Education (DART-Ed) webinar series looking at how safe, effective and ethical adoption of AI technology in healthcare relies on clinician confidence, and how this can be built. The session takes place on 1 Feb 2022. You can sign up for a place and view a recording of the previous webinar on our website.

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.

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 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.