Shaping the workforce of the future

The Challenge

The education of health professionals is fundamental to achieving the scale and pace of change needed to address the healthcare challenges we are facing in England. Substantial changes in the population’s healthcare needs amid increasing financial pressures mean that the NHS workforce will need to adapt to deliver future models of care. By investing in training and development, the NHS can ensure staff are able to deliver the care required by patients into the future.

Facing the challenge

UCLPartners is supporting the NHS to improve healthcare delivery by ensuring it has a workforce that is skilled to provide high quality care at all stages of life. Working on behalf of Health Education England (HEE), UCLPartners has been funded to develop and deliver development and training resources for the NHS workforce in dementia and end of life care (EoLC) across north central and north east London.

Dementia

As the number of patients with dementia continues to rise, demand for quality dementia care will increase. UCLPartners is striving to drive a cultural change in dementia care across the partnership by ensuring all healthcare staff receive dementia awareness training, which is specific to their role and which embeds dementia training into their organisation’s workforce development.

By focusing on three themes which align with national NHS dementia strategies, including dementia awareness in primary care; embedding Tier 2 training within healthcare organisations; and evidencing the impact, UCLPartners hopes to add value to the estimated 65,336 patients within our population who live with dementia.

End of life care

End of life care is now a key priority within the NHS following national attention on gaps in provision and recent research on patient and carer experience into how EoLC is delivered. It has become clear that there is an urgent need for significant investment in how EoLC is organised and delivered.

UCLPartners was commissioned by HEE to produce educational materials for health and care staff across acute and community settings on how to approach EoLC planning and delivery with patients. The educational materials developed focused on improving discussions about EoLC between professionals and patients, but also looked at practical aspects such as physical care and delivering an individualised care plan. The team used a ‘train the trainer’ model to disseminate the education materials, providing on-going support for ‘champion’ trainers throughout the programme.

PROGRESS HIGHLIGHTS

Dementia

• Since 2013 47,000 health and care professionals have received Tier 1 dementia awareness training
• Since April 2015 over 7300 healthcare staff have received Tier 2 dementia training
• Since April 2016 100 GP Practices have received dementia awareness training and committed towards becoming dementia friendly
• Our work with London Ambulance Service was recognised by NHS England and now features on the Learning Repository website as an example of best practice.

End of life care

• Since October 2015, over 240 people have been trained as champion trainers in EoLC across 82 acute and community organisations, and the material has been used to train over 2000 staff members
• An educational film developed by the team has been included in an e-learning module by UCLH for their clinical staff.

Impact/outcomes

Dementia:

• 90% of trainees said they will use what they have learnt to change their working practice
• 88% have continued to change their practice at least six months after training
• 87% would like to continue further dementia training

End of life care:

• An increase of 17-20% in learners’ confidence in delivering EoLC following training sessions
• 71% of learners felt the training had a positive effect on the way they deliver care, with 83% saying they would recommend to others
• A follow up evaluation of learners in the community found that there was a sustained increase in confidence in all nine areas assessed, with a further increase in some areas