Priority 2: Establishing and protecting educator time and resources to support the implementation of Integrated Care Board workforce plans

The aim of education should be to facilitate the provision of the most effective, person-centred and integrated care for people. Without educators, we do not have a future workforce.

We heard that COVID and workload pressures in general have had a significant impact on education and training delivery, yet educators report that the service implications for ‘lost’ education and training opportunities are not fully understood by the wider system. As illustrated in the #NoTrainingTodayNoSurgeonsTomorrow campaign, if we don’t train now and recover lost training, there will be continued disruption to our planned surgeon pipeline, creating gaps in the consultant workforce, reducing future service delivery and further demoralising trainees with a risk to retention5. Whilst this reference is specific to surgery, the impact and implications are relevant to all learner groups.

Following the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee’s findings of its short inquiry into clinical academics in the NHS, a key recommendation stated that NHS trusts and hospitals must set out a plan as to how they will meet the statutory commitment to allow consultants to spend an average of 25% of their time on supporting professional activities on average.

Within HEE’s Quality Framework, there is a requirement for providers to ensure that ‘formally recognised educators are appropriately supported, with allocated time in job plans/job descriptions, to undertake their roles’ (Standard 4.2)7. According to the General Medical Council (GMC) National Training Survey 2022 results, completed by over 18,000 educators (entitled ‘trainers’ within the survey), 55% were not able to use all the training time allocated for that purpose, due to conflicting workload pressures, rising from 53% in 20218. In some professions, there is currently no clear job planning that makes the contribution to education identifiable and transparent. The planned NHS England educator survey will aim to capture all those with educator responsibilities, even if these are not yet formally recognised.

There is a need to establish and protect educator time and resources to support the implementation of Integrated Care Board (ICB) workforce plans. This should be multiprofessional, across all professional groups, recognising the unique challenges for each, and building educator activity explicitly into job plans and timetables. Appropriate planning and education strategies and incentives and adequate investment in the healthcare workforce are required to provide community-based, person-centred, continuous, equitable and integrated care.