Project Update - November 2010

1. Background

NHS Education for Scotland is leading the Effective Practitioner initiative which is a commitment in Scotland to support the large group of Nurses, Midwives and Allied Health Professionals (NMAHP) practitioners at Level 5 and 6 of the Career Framework for Health. It recognises and values the critical role this group of staff play in the day-to-day running of NHS Scotland.

Effective practitioner is explicitly linked to other work including the NHS Healthcare Quality Strategy; Patients Rights; Patient Experience; Long term conditions; Leading Better Care and Senior AHP Development Framework;

2. Progress to date

2.1 Stakeholder Engagement

-  A National Steering Group with wide stakeholder representation meets quarterly to steer the initiative.

-  A User Reference Group supports developments through face to face meetings, email communication and engagement with peers at each stage of the project.

-  An electronic communication group is open to anyone who wishes to be more closely engaged with the Effective Practitioner from an organisational or individual perspective. This group can be joined through the website by completing the project update form. http://www.nes.scot.nhs.uk/eforms/live/documents/epcontact.html

-  Service User engagement includes representation on the steering group and the intention to engage through local and national service users groups.

2.2 Phase 1 - 2009-2010: Initial scoping activity

Phase 1 included baseline work to inform the initiative with the following outputs:

-  Literature review and executive summary;

-  Reports and presentations from a national stakeholder engagement event

-  Report from local stakeholder engagement of a representative sample from 6 health boards.

These are available on the website. http://www.nes.scot.nhs.uk/effective_practitioner/

2.3 Phase 2 – 2010-2011: Developing Resources

A website for Effective Practitioner is currently in development and will be available in Spring 2011. The site will include support for practitioners to assist them in their Continuing Professional Development, Personal Development Plan for KSF, and Professional Revalidation. The site will be engaging and incorporate multi media such as digital stories/ podcasts. It will include:

-  A self-assessment tool – assessing knowledge and skills and identify learning needs

-  Bite-sized learning activities supported online but undertaken as work based learning locally covering the four pillars, e.g. clinical practice; evidence based practice; learning teaching and supervision, leadership and management

-  Sign posting to a wide range of existing learning resources

-  Targeted work-based learning activities

A small number of local interventions are about to take place in clinical practice in collaboration with the NHS Boards. Individuals and teams within selected clinical areas, will use their local supporting infrastructure to review the quality of care provided; identify learning and developmentneeds; matchthese to existing resources identified during scoping work for Effective Practitioner. Emerging gaps in resources could potentially be filled through development of new resources.

The current local and national infrastructure for practice education and development and wider networks already in place are ideally placed to support effective practitioner and Phase 2 includes strengthening this infrastructure.

3. Phase 3 – 2011-2012: Implementation and evaluation

Phase 3 will progress implementation of the effective practitioner and will incorporate evaluation of the resources, activity and supporting infrastructure

This phase will include further development of the website and learning resources inform how best way to embed and sustain interventions.

4. Project Team

Staff within the NMAHP Careers Team with responsibility for Effective Practitioner are:

Liz Jamieson, Programme Director

Valerie Blair, Programme Director

Ann Rae, Educational Projects Manager

Carol Curran, Project Officer

Lesley Armstrong, Project Administrator

They can all be contacted through the central email

ANN RAE, 1st November 2010

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