NES
Item X
June 23rd 2011
NHS Education for Scotland
Board Paper Summary
1. Title of Paper
An Update and Review of NES Engagement Activity and Developments
2. Author(s) of Paper
Karen Fielding (Strategic Engagement Project Manager, Planning & Performance); and regional engagement section written by Karen Howe (Partnership Development Officer, EDD).
3. Purpose of Paper
This paper presents an overview of recent engagement activity between NES and the territorial and Special Health Boards, through three main mechanisms of engagement:
1. The NES board engagement process between senior named contacts and nominated health board contacts;
2. NES Chair/CEO high-level engagement meetings, and
3. Regional development work.
This paper also highlights the key priorities and themes for the health boards which have emerged from discussions during 2010-2011. In addition, the paper will outline some areas for further work and development during 2011-12, to help strengthen the process within the context of our new Strategic Framework and a requirement to work in a more integrated, collaborative way. The information gathered from this engagement activity has been used to inform the planning processes for next year.
This paper does not seek to cover the comprehensive uni-professional work (and associated networks) between NES and the boards.
4. Key Issues
· To provide an update on progress with engagement activity by outlining the
three main strands of engagement currently operating between NES and health
boards.
· To report on the key issues and priorities emerging from the engagement process during 2001-2011. The intention is to report to the NES Board on a twice-yearly basis (May/June and Nov/Dec).
· To highlight the limitations of the engagement process, and acknowledge the challenges faced by such a relationship-building exercise.
· To propose improvements and outline future areas of work which the engagement team would plan to make in the next six months to achieve better collaboration in all engagement activities, and clearer communication both with health boards and internally within NES.
5. Financial Implications
There are no direct financial implications arising from this report or the engagement process as a whole. However, it should be noted that funding is often used to address the needs identified via the engagement process and facilitate partnership working. Given the current challenging financial climate for both NES and the wider NHSScotland, this expectation will have to be managed accordingly.
6. Impact on Quality Ambitions
There is a range of activity across NES Directorates that supports the three key ambitions of the Quality Strategy: safe care, effective care and person-centred care (including six quality outcomes and twelve indicators). The engagement process helps to identify and confirm where priority areas lie, as well as connect the appropriate NES leads with the health boards in order to follow-up on specific areas of quality improvement work. As well as established areas of joint working with boards that support the Quality Strategy (e.g. Patient Safety), new activities related to the Quality Improvement education and training and the development of person-centred care will help ensure that NES is supporting all three key ambitions.
7. Relevance to Strategic Work Plan
The engagement process aligns to all six of the strategic themes identified in the 2011 Corporate Plan. Of particular relevance is the aim of providing education for an excellent workforce, by ensuring our activity is aligned to service need and ultimately to improving the patient experience. The Board engagement process also strongly supports the aim of working as an integrated and connected organisation, as our NES engagement team consists of senior staff representing a range of roles and directorates - working collaboratively to share information and support successful engagement with our partners.
8. Recommendation(s) for Decision
This paper is for information purposes only.
NES
June 2011
KF
An Update and Review of NES Engagement Activity and Developments
2010-2011
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 4
2 Key Issues and Priorities Emerging from Engagement Activity 4
3 Update on NES Board Engagement 12
3.1 Territorial Health Boards………………………………………………….12
3.2 Special Health Boards………………………………………………….. .18
4 Update on NES Chair / CEO Engagement Meetings …. .20
4.1 Territorial Health Boards………………………………………………….20
4.2 Special Health Boards…………………………………………………….24
5 Update on NES Regional Engagement 25
5.1 North region………………………………………………………………..26
5.2 South East region…………………………………………………...... 27
5.3 West region………………………………………………………………...28
5.4 Summary……………………………………………………………………29
6 Challenges and Limitations………………………………………………..29
7 Opportunities and Future Work…………………………………………...30
8 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….31
Appendix 1: Contacts for Engagement Process with NHSScotland Boards
1 Introduction
This paper presents an update on the three main mechanisms of engagement between NES and the health boards in Scotland. The paper begins with a review of the NES Board engagement process, by examining each board in turn, and providing a brief update on progress since the latter part of 2010. This section is followed by an overview of engagement meetings with the Special Health Boards.
During 2010-2011, high-level meetings between the NES Chair and Chief Executive, have been held with their counterparts at both the territorial and Special Health Boards. Details of which can be found in Section 4 of this report.
An update on the third mechanism of NES engagement with the boards - that of regional working – will then be examined in more detail. This process is supported by Regional Educational Project Managers, who help support the activity of the senior named contacts and participate in regional workforce/education and training groups as appropriate to their region.
All of the above methods of connecting more systematically with our health board partners have not only established strategic relationships, strengthened partnership working and facilitated a two-way conduit of information flow, but have also allowed us to identify new issues and priorities emerging for the boards. This is particularly useful to our planning process, which continues to have a strong relationship with the engagement process, by ensuring that key board priorities are translated into NES activity, and are subsequently articulated into the NES Strategic Framework and Corporate Plan 2011-12.
Since the strategic engagement process began in May 2007, it has aimed to increase strategic involvement with all health boards by creating systematic, collaborative relationships between NES ‘senior named contacts’ and nominated links at board level. Updated contact details for those involved in the engagement process (both for NES and the health boards) can be found in Appendix 1.
2 Key Issues and Priorities Emerging from Engagement Activity
Sections 3, 4 and 5 of this paper show the breadth of workforce, education, training and development issues that are ascertained through the various engagement forums between NES and the health boards. Some themes are recurring across health board areas, and some remain unchanged from last year. Feedback from our key stakeholders on the NES Strategic Framework during 2010 also reflected issues that have been previously identified through our engagement process, and thereby providing further evidence as to what the current and emerging priorities will be for boards. It should be noted however, that the major issue of ‘reshaping the medical workforce’ continues to feature strongly and a large amount of work is ongoing with all of the boards.
The key themes identified through the three main engagement mechanisms during 2010-2011 are summarised in Table 1 overleaf, alongside how these are, or will be, taken forward within our strategic work programme. Table 2 highlights some potential new areas of priority for the boards, ascertained from recent engagement visits.
Table 1: Current themes identified through engagement - and links to our strategic work programme and/or political drivers
Main Theme / Reference / evidence to support theme from our strategic workplanHealthcare Support Workers (HCSW) agenda / Our Corporate Plan 2011-2012 highlights the outcomes and activities to support this agenda, including:
· Analysis of education needs and provision of resources for skills development
· Develop online knowledge services
· Deliver educational support for maternity care support workers
· Provide post-qualification training for dental nurses (specialist skills)
· Develop a national career framework for life sciences support workers
· Support education & training for pharmacy technicians
· Support staff to make effective use of SQA Vocational Qualifications
· Review materials supporting the implementation of the HCSW Induction Standards
· Establish an inter-professional AHP HCSW community of practice.
Enabling boards to develop e-learning skills / Political driver: the drive for quality and cost efficiency will need to be enabled by the improved use of information technology and innovation. E-learning remains an important priority area (e.g telehealth – transforming how healthcare is delivered).
NES will explore the potential of increased educational support for the proposed expansion of ‘telehealth’ and new technologies. Other examples of our work to support the e-learning agenda include:
· Developing a new e-learning strategy and the educational infrastructure to support learners in the workplace
· Distance learning and e-learning programmes (e.g. general medical practice, pharmacy)
· Provide an e-learning resource in smoking cessation for community pharmacists and their staff
· Further develop the e-learning resource Promoting effective immunisation practice and related resources
Feedback we received as part of our strategic review during 2010 identified a strong theme around e-learning and in particular, a drive to improve consistency and access to learning opportunities through better integration of our online tools and resources.
Knowledge services / Our Corporate Plan indicates the importance of the Knowledge Network in terms of accessing the numerous education and training resources developed by NES - providing evidence, information, e-learning and community tools to help find, share and use knowledge in day-today work and learning.
Some examples of the broad range of online resources developed by us include Scottish Medical Training, Flying Start, and Testing for the Best.
Mandatory training (e.g. non-technical skills) / We have identified a need for supporting boards develop a national approach to mandatory training. This is consequently reflected in our planned activity for 2011-2012. For example, we are developing our role in relation to both statutory and mandatory training:
· looking to better integrate our knowledge services, online and e-learning resources to support Theme 5 Developing Innovative Educational Infrastructure
· development of consistent, transferable and academically recognisable learning opportunities will be examined by the Educational Development Directorate (EDD) e.g. helping to support the transfer of knowledge across health boards.
Long Term Conditions (LTC) / This work is reflected under Theme 4 Responding to New Patient Pathways, and we continue to support education and training to support new models of care for LTC. We shall continue to support the LTC Action Plan through activities including:
· support staff delivering vocational rehabilitation
· provide education to support enhanced capability in communication and human relationships
· review learning needs analysis for chronic pain (to identify priorities / gaps)
· supporting the Scottish Diabetes Action Plan etc.
Leadership and Management; Organisational Development / At the heart of our work will be the Delivering Quality through Leadership Strategy, to support boards in developing leadership development capability in line with the Quality Strategy. We will continue to take a national and cross-cutting approach, and focus on delivering a range of national training programmes (e.g. Leadership and Management Training Programme); developing national networks (e.g. OD leads), as well as provide support and resources (e.g. for executive directors and senior managers).
We will establish a performance structure to help develop and implement a performance management strategy and leadership and management skills to support Theme 6: Delivering Our Aims Through a Connected Organisation.
Improving educational supervision / We continue to improve educational supervision across professional groups, in the context of Theme 1 Education to Create an Excellent Workforce. For example:
· updating our training programme in clinical and education supervision, dealing with doctors in difficulty and training programme management
· provide a preparatory educational programme, START, for dentists who wish to become trainers
· work in partnership to develop a new clinical educational and practice development methods for multi-professional educational supervisors in areas such as psychology and cognitive behavioural therapy
· strengthen the clinical learning environment through the national network of Practice Education Facilitators (PEFs), to provide support and mentoring for pre-registration nurses and midwives.
Patient Safety and Quality Education Framework / Political driver: The SNP manifesto signals a continued commitment to the ‘NHS Scotland Quality Strategy’ and there may also be an expectation that we take the national lead on quality improvement (QI) education and training, and that we develop a consistent quality focus across all the education that we provide.
We will be required to continue to support HAI as a key aspect of patient safety aspects of quality improvement. This was identified as an important priority by NHS Boards during our strategic review in 2010 and has been a constant feature of our engagement with NHS Boards over the last three years.
We can demonstrate a continuing commitment to the ‘NHS Scotland Quality Strategy’ through the following:
· our strategic theme of ‘improving quality’, specifically supported by our strategic objective 4 ‘Providing education in quality improvement for enhanced safety’’
· we are currently providing a broad range of multi-professional QI education e.g. a core curriculum, clinical skills, patient safety and online resources
· We also provide QI education focused on specific professional groups
However, it is important that we develop collaborative working and internal communication so that all future QI education is identified, reported on and consistently delivered.
Remote and Rural / There is still a strong political commitment to improving access to services in remote and rural communities. We continue to provide a range of resources and educational initiatives to support this national agenda, building on valuable stakeholder relationships and helping to support Theme 4: Responding to New Patient Pathways.
Examples include:
· Provide remote and rural training schemes for general medical and dental practice
· Providing telehealthcare education
· Providing integrated education to support models of care which are closer to people in their communities
· Lead an impact assessment for remote and rural education across Scotland
The remote and rural work that we do is also of direct relevance to that of developing roles to support workforce modernisation.
New and extended roles / We continue to be involved in the development of new roles (e.g. assistant practitioners, advanced practice roles and healthcare support workers), and deliver a range of initiatives and specialised projects for role development to help boards redesign their services. This activity helps shape strategic theme 3: Reshaping the NHS Workforce.
Re-shaping the Medical Workforce - medical staffing issues / We support the workforce modernisation agenda through education and training for frontline staff at all levels of the NHS career framework, as shown by strategic theme 3: Reshaping the NHS Workforce. We will work closely with the Scottish Government and partners to ensure a robust approach to planning the clinical workforce.
In medicine it is important that education and workforce planning becomes more closely integrated with education for other healthcare professionals. We expect that Scottish Medical Training (SMT) will produce a larger than usual number of trained doctors and we are working with key partners to improve labour market intelligence (LMI) in the context of planning for a service delivered with less doctors in training.
Table 2: Emerging workforce, educational and training themes from recent engagement meetings