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Nursing and Midwifery
Supporting the vaccination programme
Find out how healthcare students support the vaccination programme by registering with their local bank.
To support the development of your knowledge and skills, and enhance your practice, there are a host of online resources you can access. Here we highlight a few pertinent topics; do explore the platforms for other resources of interest.
To develop your awareness of safeguarding principles you can download the NHS Safeguarding App
Webinars on safeguarding:
NHS Safeguarding learning community platform
Health Education England E-Learning for Healthcare platform has hundreds of learning resources. Some examples include:
Recognising and managing deterioration
A game which builds your understanding of the management of sepsis
Infection Prevention and Control
Priorities for Care of the Dying Person
The Learning Hub is a platform enabling the health and care workforce to contribute and share a wide variety of learning resources for other learners to use. Some examples include:
Working effectively with families: being seen and heard
Understanding independent mental health advocacy for mental health staff
Other Resources
View forums and collaborate with others on the Future NHS Collaboration platform
Peruse hundreds of online learning resources on e-LfH Hub (e-lfh.org.uk)
Access hundreds of resources which the health and care workforce have shared on the Learning Hub
VACCINATION STATUS OF HEALTHCARE STUDENTS
Sent to Vice-Chancellors and CEOs of Education Providers
21 January 2022
I am extremely grateful for all the support you and the education sector have provided over these past two years, in what have been the most challenging circumstances of a lifetime. The efforts from colleagues across academia and the NHS have contributed to record levels of graduates into the NHS – thank you for the role you have played in this success.
On behalf of the Department for Health and Social Care I must now seek your support once more in our continued fight against coronavirus. As Health Education England is the statutory body responsible, under the Care Act (2014), for all healthcare students in England, the organisation has been commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care to undertake an exercise relating to the vaccination status of students.
You will be aware that the government developed new legislation, approved by Parliament, which mandates a completed course of a Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) coronavirus vaccination. This applies to persons deployed or engaged in the provision of CQC-regulated activity, in which they have direct, face to face contact with patients and service users. This includes students, among the front-line workers, and non-clinical workers not directly involved in patient care but who may have face to face contact with patients, such as porters, cleaners, or receptionists. Students will therefore be required to have completed a course of vaccinations, first and second doses, to continue their clinical placements from 1 April 2022. There are some exemptions to this including: persons medically exempt; those under the age of 18; and if the person has participated in a clinical trial for a COVID-19 vaccine. There is a further exemption, however NHS guidance is to still receive the vaccination, for pregnancy where they have been issued a temporary exemption from a GP, which will be valid until they are 16-weeks post birth.
The final date for first vaccinations is Thursday 3 February 2022, to ensure that the second vaccination is administered before the 1 April 2022 deadline. We strongly encourage all students to have completed their course of vaccinations for the 1 April 2022.
The Department for Education, and the Department for Health and Social Care have requested that Health Education England collate information relating to the vaccination status of pre-registration healthcare students across Nursing, Midwifery, Allied Health Professions, Healthcare Science, Pharmacy and Return to Practice programmes. Across HEE we acknowledge that you will have already taken preparations and possibly already collected information on vaccination status. It is our intention to enable you to share this information in a manner which reduces any unnecessary burdens on colleagues. To do this, our plans are that HEE will pre-populate a template sharing all information you submitted for pre-registration programmes only in the October Student Data Collection, and request only three columns to be completed. For clarification, this is not requesting any personal identifiable information, just the total numbers as identified below. I hope that by sharing this with you now, it allows your colleagues the adequate time to prepare for this collection.
The additional columns will request total numbers, at a cohort level, answering the following:
Number of students Vaccinated (either first dose, or full course)
Number of students Not Vaccinated but eligible
Number of students Exempt
When combined the total of these additional questions will then mirror the cohort number already provided.
This request will be open from 4 February 2022 (following the final date for first vaccinations on 3 February 2022 to enable the full vaccination course to be completed by the 1 April 2022 deadline) and will remain open until 10 February 2022.
This date was chosen in anticipation that it will provide the most accurate information available. On collation, this will enable Health Education England, the Department for Education, and the Department for Health and Social Care, to forecast any likely impact on the NHS workforce, enable any future funding decisions, and allow for appropriate mitigations to be enacted. It is anticipated that this will be a one-off collection, and if there are requirements in the future this will be absorbed into the standard collections made by Health Education England. Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible within the current timescales.
Health Education England has engaged with the Council of Deans of Health, Universities UK, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, and the Health and Care Professions Council before requesting your additional support. Health Education England is not aware of any other nationwide body collecting this information specifically at cohort level, but if you do become aware please contact us so we can ensure this is completed once only, and therefore reduce any more data collections and their impact on your time.
I trust that the information shared above will provide the assurances required for your university to participate with this collection, to ensure a fully compliant response. Health Education England colleagues will be liaising with your colleagues in the next week to provide more technical advice and guidance on this collection.
Thank you in advance for your ongoing support.
Yours faithfully,
Professor Mark Radford CBE
Chief Nurse, Health Education England
Deputy Chief Nursing Officer, NHS England
Regulations revoking vaccination as a condition of deployment (VCOD) were made on Tuesday 1 March and will take effect on Tuesday 15 March. For more information, see the statement from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.