Benefits and impact of NHS educators

Making educator impact visible across healthcare 

Educators play a crucial role in shaping healthcare outcomes hence it is important that their contribution is recognised and valued. The Educator Workforce Programme’s realising benefits and impact work focuses on demonstrating the tangible value that educators bring to healthcare systems, patient care and workforce development. 

Through this workstream, we aim to create a sustainable foundation for the educator workforce by clearly showing how their expertise directly translates to improved health outcomes and service delivery. 

What we're doing 

This workstream is developing frameworks to evaluate and celebrate the difference educators make across the NHS. The framework is being developed in collaboration with diverse stakeholders to ensure quality, consistency and efficient use of resources. 

This priority area supports systems, regional and national teams to: 

• recognise the value educators add to the development of the current and future workforce and to have a positive effect on health outcomes and health inequalities 
• ensure the educator workforce is properly valued and sustained  
• apply evidence-based approaches to continuous improvement 

Our key objectives  

We are working to: 

• define success through specific, measurable indicators that capture educator impact 
• implement continuous improvement methodologies to achieve measurable benefits for patients, learners, systems and the wider healthcare workforce 
• identify effective practices for building and sustaining the educator workforce across different systems and professions 
• evaluate value for money and return on investment in educator development 
• ensure equality, diversity and inclusion considerations are integral to our approach, particularly examining how educators can help address health inequalities 

Our approach 

To deliver meaningful impact, we are: 

• building on existing evidence and measures, enhancing them where needed to capture educator impact 
• applying iterative improvement methodologies to shape the programme's direction, implementation and evaluation 
• embedding equality, diversity and inclusion throughout our work  
• ensuring all indicators, outcomes and impact assessments reflect our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion

Working together to drive change

This workstream represents a collaborative effort across the NHS and our partners. We're actively engaging with regional, system and national colleagues across all professions to co-develop effective approaches to measuring and enhancing educator impact. 

Get involved 

If you're interested in contributing to this important area of work or would like to learn more about how we're measuring and improving educator impact across the NHS, visit our NHS educators contact page.