Quality and patient safety goal

Objective 1 - Embed our Quality Strategy and Framework to drive a more consistent and systematic approach to quality assurance, and improvement

Quality depends on the capacity, capability, and competence of our people, ultimately secured through selection, training, and regulation. Patient safety will be compromised if any of these components fail.

Our updated Quality Framework reflects the ever-changing landscape and context of health education whilst our Quality Strategy outlines a whole system approach to meeting our patient safety and learner wellbeing expectations in quality clinical learning environments.

Our Framework shows what learners can expect, the contribution they can make and how to raise concerns; it’s transparent about placement standards for patients and citizens; and for providers it outlines how those standards will be managed via the NHS Education Contract.

We will further embed quality and ensure standards are met by working with providers and other partners on where improvement is needed and how lessons can be spread across the NHS.

Measuring progress

Board Assurance Framework Opportunities supported: 1 and 3

Objective 2 - Enhance the quality and safety of maternity services, by delivering the planned future workforce and ensuring the quality of their training

The Ockenden Report into maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust makes clear there is more to do to ensure safe, high quality, individualised maternity care for all. We will build on our Maternity Transformation programme over the last five years, to deliver 1,200 additional midwives and 100 consultant obstetricians to help fill workforce gaps.

Whilst helping increase student numbers we will focus on improving education and training quality by ensuring student midwives have the right exposure to all areas of practice and clinical need. This will include multidisciplinary training for staff who work together and a focus on high quality leadership and positive learning cultures. Maternity training funding should be ring- fenced for this purpose.

To further enhance careers, we are aligning education opportunities through an Advanced Clinical Practice Credential and an Education Career and Competence Framework for midwives, from the point of registration through to consultant level practice.

Measuring progress

Board Assurance Framework Opportunities supported: 2 and 3

Objective 3 - Ensure the learner voice is heard and acted upon by using data and insight to measure, monitor and improve the quality of the learner experience

The data from the latest multi-professional National Education and Training Survey (completed by a record number of healthcare learners) will be triangulated with other data and insight, enabling us to improve in areas of concern and promote good practice more widely.

Measuring progress

Board Assurance Framework Opportunity/ies supported: 1 and 3

Cross cutting objective - We will strive to reduce health inequalities and create a health workforce representative of the population it serves

Our final objective underpins all our strategic goals.

Reducing health inequalities and having a diverse, locally representative workforce improves communities, individual lives, and the NHS. A greater emphasis on prevention and early intervention in the social determinants of health - employment, education, or housing; or helping people adopt healthy behaviours, reduces health inequalities.

We work with partners to provide access and participation solutions aligned to system goals, tackle inequality, and enable an entire workforce supply approach, and an inclusive culture. We will widen access and participation in health professions by:

• developing a broader range of entry routes and course delivery options, including a medical apprenticeship, to ensure the widest possible selection criteria to study medicine
• working with medical schools to increase recruitment from people with disadvantaged and diverse backgrounds
• redistributing medical training investment to remote, rural, and coastal communities
• continuing to purposely promote health careers to diverse and underrepresented groups
• developing alternative education and training routes such as apprenticeships and T levels
• breaking down systemic barriers that prevent career progression for people from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds
• provide networks, toolkits, information, advice, guidance, work experience and work-related learning to systems
• provide pipelines in specific pathways such as our ‘access to medicine, dentistry, and healthcare professions programme’.

​Measuring progress

Board Assurance Framework Opportunities supported: 1, 2, 3 and 4