Website of the Department of Health

Links need to be made between mainstream Education, Training and Development (ETD) and Local Implementation Strategies (LISs). Individuals responsible for the LIS ETD plan need to be familiar with some of the processes that are in place, people that they can seek help from and resources that are available to help develop new attitudes, skills and knowledge in information management. This section provides a summary of:

Recent policy developments that impact mainstream ETD are outlined in Annex L Other Recent Initiatives.

Detail

H1 The general situation for healthcare professionals is that there are varying degrees of formality for pre-qualification, post qualification and continuing education and training, including Continuing Professional Development (CPD). A standard for integrating information management into clinical education has been agreed with the relevant professional bodies and organisations. (See Strategy Annex D, Programme A

H2 For other professional staff arrangements for CPD and Personal Development Planning (PDP) will apply but the existing situation is much less formal and ad hoc. This is also true for IM&T professionals.

H3 For staff that are not professionally qualified the general level of ETD (and therefore opportunities to learn about IM&T) will depend upon the extent to which good management principles apply locally, and the relative priority of IM&T within a given organisation.

H4 Developing information management as a core skill for healthcare professionals

Healthcare professionals (including doctors, nurses, midwives and health visitors, and Professions Allied to Medicine) are key staff for Information for Health. These staff comprise around 80% of the workforce in the NHS.

People have tended to view information management and technology as an add-on to their professional skills. However health professionals of all kinds manage information all of the time, with and without computers. The technology is changing rapidly and so are the skills required to manage information as part of professional practice. The most effective way to learn these information management skills is not separately, but as part of mainstream professional education and training.

H5 Mainstream ETD processes involve:

Table 1 provides a general summary of the mechanisms by which these processes are currently achieved:

Local Education Consortia commission the bulk of education and training for healthcare professionals through the Non-Medical (NMETS) budget. The mechanisms and sources of funding for commissioning and providing medical education and training are different. Funding for medical ETD is from a variety of different sources for example:

The role of professional bodies in facilitating the development of new knowledge, skills and attitudes, and bringing about changes in culture is very important. Programme A of this strategy (Developing the right information and information management skills for the NHS) describes what action is being taken at national levelin collaboration with professional and regulatory bodies like the Royal Colleges, Chartered Societies, the General Medical Council (GMC) and the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting (UKCC)to develop and implement new ETD standards in information management.

There is a unique opportunity to integrate health information into mainstream education and training, and actions for local staff to ensure that they optimise the use of ETD resources.

Bearing in mind the complexity of the system, the actions will not be straightforward and will require some perseverance. Approaches that have been successful in the past include:

H6 Summary for Local Action

Each local community will need to achieve a balance within their local ETD plan as to what activity can be supported from the different options available (summarised in Table 1). For the medium to longer term the contribution of healthcare professionals needs to be supported by professional education programmes and CPD. It will not be possible to achieve the level of ETD activity required to enhance the information management skills of 650,000 clinical staff without a major contribution from mainstream education programmes and consortia and postgraduate deans should be made aware of the issues at an early stage.

In the short to medium term establishingRegional Learning Networkswill offer opportunities to prepare trainers for the task of training and educating the wider workforce. In the early stages LIS training plans will need to reflect a need to equip people with very specific skills for helping to implement local strategies. Examples are for LIS teams themselves and skills associated with procurement. Further help will be available from the NHS Information Authority in the form of specific programmes to support local implementation of national projects such as GPnet.

Table 1 (below)  provides a general summary of the mechanisms by which the mainstream ETD processes processes are currently achieved:

Table 1

Process Health Care Professionals Medical and Dental Staff Management Professionals Other Staff Groups Numbers in NHS

(8,000 senior) 171,000
(133,000 Clerical & Administrative)

Standards Setting Professional and Regulatory Bodies e.g. Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, Royal College of Midwifery, UKCC, ENB, CPSM, DoH, NHS Executive Professional and Regulatory Bodies e.g. the General Medical Council (GMC), the Specialist Training Authority of the medical Royal Colleges (STA), the Joint Committee on Postgraduate Training for General Practice (JCPTGP), the General Dental Council Professional bodies e.g. Institute of Personnel and Development, Institute of Health Service Managers Professional and occupational bodies and / or local health organisation

ETD Commissioning NHS local Education Consortia Department of Health, GMC, Deans and Postgraduate Deans Local health organisations Local health organisations

ETD Provision Approved Universities and Colleges Approved Universities and Colleges As dictated by local needs As dictated by local needs

Evaluation and Monitoring Provider and Education Consortia Provider, Department of Health, GMC and the Quality Assessment Agency (QAA) for undergraduate education; Deans and Postgraduate Deans Provider

Local health organisations Provider

local health organisations

This diagram illustrates how Local Implementation Strategies can be supported, interact with and make use of mainstream ETD mechanisms for healthcare professionals across the NHS. (The mechanisms for commissioning and providing medical education and training though analogous in principle are different to the model presented above (see Table 1). Funding for medical ETD is from different sources.