Background

The programme concept was based on findings from Health Education England’s Future Doctor Report, which highlighted the need for healthcare professionals to have more generalist skills. Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the need for generalist skills in order to expertly work across integrated care systems and meet the evolving complexity of population health needs whilst championing staff wellbeing and professional development.

The programme was co-created with stakeholders across the health and care system and designed to deliver the GMC Generic Professional Capabilities through innovative blended learning opportunities, supplementing specialty training and enhancing generalist skills. Watch the enhance overview video to see how the programme started.

Our approach does not alter established curricula or training pathways. We are neither creating a new generalist specialty nor diminishing the role of either specialist or general practitioners; rather delivering on a new vision of professional practice for the 21st Century – working collaboratively to reduce health inequalities and support delivery of care across all types of health and care settings.

enhance builds on existing NHSE workforce, training, and education initiatives to develop a universal wraparound professional development offer aiming to enhance current training, with a focus on embedding generalist skills early on in medical careers, allowing a broader future career for all doctors in training – increasing flexibility for all.

The programme outcomes were set to address a number of key 21st Century health needs, to:

• Support future doctors to feel confident in meeting the complex demands of the healthcare landscape, while promoting self-care at individual, team, and organisational levels across all healthcare professions.
• Address health inequalities and support equitable healthcare delivery across maturing integrated care systems including remote, rural, and coastal regions.
• Feel confident in co-delivering ‘whole person’ care for patients with multiple conditions.
• Be fluent in shared decision making and personalised care.
• Become authentic, collaborative leaders and colleagues with a thorough grounding in human factors and team science.
• Understand and address population health and care needs in the communities they serve by harnessing data, technology, and contemporary research methodologies.
• Apply their learning to address local health priorities and specific needs such as homelessness, poverty, migrant health, and other social justice agendas.
• Become system literate across organisational boundaries with cross-cutting interests and skills in informatics, digital health, and epidemiology.

Since the official launch of the NHSE enhancing generalist skills programme in August 2022, 7 successful regional trailblazer sites have been established and to date have supported over 400 multi-professional learners to develop their generalist skills. Shared work and learning have been captured via Trailblazer network meetings and is contributing to future iterations of the programme as well as a bank of resources on the learning hub. 

The 2023 NHS Long Term Workforce Plan further emphasised the importance of generalist skills and mandated that the enhance programme be expanded to embed the benefits of a more generalist approach across healthcare education and training. Evaluation of the enhance programme is currently underway, with a year one report expected in autumn 2023. Further expansion of the enhance programme is starting in August 2023, with increased trailblazer cohorts, planned Integrated Care System pilots, launching enhance in the Foundation Programme and ongoing alignment with Medical Royal College specialty training programmes.

Our Enhancing Generalist Skills: Developing our Integrated Healthcare Teams webinar is available now.