What HEE does for health care professionals in training

HEE spends around £5bn directly employing 3,200 people and over 2,500 NHS based educators to support 240,000 students and trainees. Around 31,000 new healthcare professionals last year joining over 54,000 doctors both training and providing service.

Workforce Planning

We provide:

1. Workforce planning for all workforce groups
2. Education support mainly for postgraduates
3. Placement management for all learners
4. Financial support for different groups of learners.

In addition, HEE helps develop the healthcare workforce to enable it to better respond to healthcare changes now and in the future. Workforce Transformation shapes how we recruit, retain, deploy, develop and support the workforce to meet the growing and changing needs of local populations.

Time Horizons for Integrated Planning

Current – 5 Year Planning

• Known service goals / ambitions
• Known service and workforce intervention funding
• Limited impact of education and training workforce lever
• Requires ‘all levers at all levels’ workforce solutions.

In-Year Planning (Operational)

• Provider/ System workforce plans in response to immediate and emerging need, e.g. winter pressure, covid surges etc.
• Potential to increase financial expenditure
• Access to immediate resource – banks, volunteers etc.

1 Year (Annual Planning)

• Clear demand signals and supply scenarios included
• Integrated service, workforce and financial planning
• Based on current service configuration, available workforce, known supply and affordable.
• Action on all levers at all levels, but limited impact in period.

2-5 Year (Multi-Year)

• Clear demand signals (LTP) and supply scenarios
• Integrated service, workforce and financial planning
• Action on all levers at all levels
• Only short-term domestic supply from education and training (longer term fixed in this time frame).

5-15 Year Planning

• Where is service demand signal generated?
• Signals differential demand by profession
• Active planning for supply from core education and training programmes including ‘tactical’ adjustments to volumes
• ‘All levers’ = agreed assumptions / ambitions on other drivers.

>15 Year Planning

• Framework 15 (strategic drivers of service design and delivery)
• Trends in demand for health and care
• Government policy
• Whole labour market not just NHS
• Long Term domestic supply from education training and International Recruitment.

Aim: Driven bottom up.

HEE forecasts and plans the future demand and supply of clinical professionals by providing, understanding, and analysing data and outlining action to deliver outcomes. We advocate integrated planning over five interlocking timeframes.

The size and complexity of health and care; the changing needs and priorities of citizens; new clinical practice and delivery models; political demands; wider local and international labour markets; and a four nation NHS are all factored into building robust models, plans and forecasts.

Going forward defining organisational roles, responsibilities and accountability is key to ‘all levers at all levels’ integrated planning. We are working to map these over the coming months and will ensure the new organisation makes this more effective.

Supporting the education of postgraduate trainees

We support postgraduate trainee doctors, dentists, pharmacists, healthcare scientists and advanced practitioners progressing through selection, supervision, and assessment.

Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education (PGMDE)

We spend the largest proportion of our budget (£2.5bn) planning, funding, quality managing and organising education and training for over 54,000 medical and dental trainees. We organise the recruitment, delivery, and assessment of training; sign-off full registration for UK educated doctors; ensure inclusion on the specialist register with a certificate of completion of training (CCT); and improve the quality and flexibility of education and training whilst supporting doctors in training individually and collectively.

Assessment, progression, and medical revalidation

HEE is responsible for revalidation where doctors in training demonstrate they are up to date and fit to practice. Our Postgraduate Deans make their revalidation recommendations following a doctor’s Annual Review of Competency Progression (ARCP) which confirms they are providing safe, quality care and progressing against training programme standards. All dental core trainees also have a Review of Competence  Progression (RCP) which ensures that the required competences are being achieved.

Placement management

We spend nearly £200m annually supporting around 120,000 nursing, midwifery and AHP clinical placements where students provide supervised care across care settings. We play a direct role in selecting, supervising, and assessing these clinical placements.

Placement Quality

Our Quality Strategy and Quality Framework set the standards we expect of clinical learning environments, safeguarded through the NHS Education Contract. We ensure learner’s career pathways are supported and aid the transition from education to employment. We also maintain and improve placement capacity and capability to ensure training is responsive to new care models and supports workforce transformation and sustainable supply.

Our annual National Education and Training Survey (NETS), the only survey for all healthcare students and trainees, gathers views about what is working well and what could be improved in placements and training posts.

Financial support

We invest in courses and CPD for current staff. We pay clinical placement costs for all students. We provide back-fill and salary support payments for some professions. We spend to design courses, buy equipment, support learners and educators and deliver online education. As such HEE funds for every Trust, GP surgery, and many voluntary and private providers are:

1. Cost of living, through a salary contribution for employed learners, or a student bursary
2. Placement provider costs usually through placement tariff but sometimes direct supervisor or placement management cost
3. The university’s cost in the form of a tuition fee.

Our responsibilities for education and training touch on every part of the NHS, every pathway, institution, and clinical professional. We plan, recruit, educate and train the health workforce.