Kathy's Blog - May 2016

Hello and welcome to this month’s blog, as always the team are keeping busy and as well as continuing to push forward with existing workstreams we have been developing the Supply Improvement Programme plans for 2016/17. Some exciting developments will follow and so keep watching this space. 

I have attended a number of meetings and forums since the last blog and have included any relevant information in this blog. Particularly positive news is the level of interest the Midlands and East DoNs have shown in both the Supply Improvement Programme and the Employment Best Practice Guide and discussions are taking place about how this work can be transitioned to other areas. 

National Updates

Nursing Associate Role

The HEE Nursing Associate Role consultation concluded on the 12^th March.We received an overwhelming response, with over 1,300 responses, many from individual nurses and care assistants working on the frontline. Thank you to everyone involved in this -  particularly colleagues in DEQ, Communications and local offices - for leading a consultation reaching far and wide and gain such a successful response within the system.

Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) partial review: shortage occupation list and nursing

The migration advisory committee has produced its report of the partial review as above. The report can be found here and states that nursing will be included on the shortage occupation list subject to restrictions as detailed.

Update on our workstreams

Increasing Supply Through Commissioning

Master’s Programme

Work is progressing on the post graduate offer and an exciting programme of work is being developed as a potential supply pipeline for the Master’s Nursing Programme.  It has been identified via Directors of Nursing that a number of people with first degrees who would like to enter the nursing profession are known to be working within non-clinical areas in the health service and there are some leaving Higher Education with first Degrees who wish to undertake the programme but who are not currently be eligible to apply as they have no clinical care experience.  Following the success of our Pre-Nursing Experience Pilot in 2014, we are developing a similar programme to support pre-experience entry to the Master’s Programme and further detail will follow in the next blog

Flexible Nursing Pathway

Final NMC approval for Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Bedfordshire has been received and the University of Essex was successful in approval of their current programme.  The first cohorts of the flexible nursing pathway are now underway in each area and we have been receiving some positive comments from the students about the unique opportunity this has provided for them to become nurses and how it is going so far.   Please see below some of the key themes from the comments of participating students. 

Bands 1 – 4

Work continues to develop the supply pipeline.   There has been a particular focus around encouraging more young people to take up the opportunities for traineeships and apprenticeships and for these roles to form part of workforce strategies.  These should also include the development of career pathway to become Assistant Practitioners and in the future, Nurse Associates, as part of a 'Grow Your Own' approach.  

Self-Funding

A consultation on planned changes to the student funding system for nurse, midwife and allied health professional degree places has been launched by the Department of Health.

The consultation will run for 12 weeks until 30 June 2016, please follow this link for further information and the opportunity to provide an individual response.

The Council of Deans Health Education Funding in England have also released a briefing which you may find helpful before replying.

Meetings with DoNs in each of the four patches (Norfolk & Suffolk, Cambridge & Peterborough, Essex and Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire) were held in March and April to discuss the move to a self-funding model.   There were some lively debates and the risks and opportunities from the discussions by DoNs and representatives from the HEIs were captured. It is seen by some as an opportunity for system development and strengthening of provider position through the development of improved placement quality and employment offers however others have concerns around the impact on supply overall; particularly widening participation and mature students.

We are considering the most appropriate and effective way to support, facilitate and co-ordinate discussions that providers and HEIs will need to have in order to take a proactive approach to implementation.

Return to Practice  

Further work is being undertaken to map which organisations have RTPs and where they are placed on completion of their programmes. The number to be delivered this year will be 101 which meet the funding currently available, there is a potential to increase this if further funding is identified.

NMC Revalidation

Revalidation guidance is attached to the bottom of this page.

Increasing Capacity and Quality of the Clinical Learning Environment

We are in the process of mapping the learning from the workshops and the principles of the CLE to the new national quality framework.

ARU currently use a Sustainable Electronic Assessment (SEA) called Myprogress which is an application that uses a web based platform to record and track students on-going achievement in practice.  Other HEIs are considering using this system and roll out of this work will commence once confirmation from them is received.  A report by ARU on SEA can be found in the related documents section below.

The Academic Pool is continuing to work on the development of the most effective way to increase the focus of hands on practice and skills assessment for students. The opportunities for providers to meet students throughout the curriculum have been mapped and will be shared with HEIs and Providers as best practice.

Increasing Supply through Employability

Two key pieces of work are underway in this workstream the first is the development of the Student Charter which is in its final stages of development and I hope to be able to share it with you soon.

The second piece is the Best Practice Guide for Providers on recruitment and retention, the guide has been developed across the 4 Workforce Partnerships led by Ross Collett and Jenny McGuinness and is currently under review by the team. Following this it will be formally launched and be available for use in your areas.