Title of driver: Delivering high quality, effective, compassionate care: Developing the right people with the right skills and the right values: A mandate from the Government to Health Education England: April 2016 to March 2017
Source: Department of Health
Link to main document
Publication format: PDF
Date of publication: October 2016
Summary of driver:
This is the Government’s mandate to Health Education England for the year 2016/17, and sets out the priorities for HEE to help deliver the NHS Five Year Forward View.
Pre-registration nursing and midwifery course will no longer be funded through NHS bursaries or HEE funded tuition from August 2017. The aim is to allow the creation of up to 10,000 new training places.
The NHS Apprenticeship scheme will be advanced.
A new nursing associate role will be introduced, bridging the gap between HCAs and nurses and allowing HCAs to progress to a nursing role.
Key features of driver:
As well as the changes to pre-registration nursing and midwifery training, and leadership education, other objectives include an increase in the primary care workforce (5,000 more GPs and 5,000 other community staff).
The new nursing associate role will provide care in primary, secondary and social care settings, and the role will be available to existing health care assistants as well as new staff. HEE will be working with higher education to provide training courses, and 1,000 new nursing associates will be in training by the end of 2016.
There are some changes to community pharmacy planned, to integrate community pharmacists into the NHS, and to introduce clinical pharmacist posts in general practice. There will also be an expansion in the psychologist workforce to support the ‘Improved Access to Psychological Therapies’ programme.
HEE will be working with key partners to support the development of an integrated workforce across the NHS and social care, as the Government is committed to integrating them by 2020. HEE will also work to reduce reliance on overseas staff.
Primary audience: NHS senior managers, including education and training directors, national bodies involved in education and quality (e.g. CQC, NICE etc.). HEE and LETBs, professional bodies.
Impact on library policy/practice:
The increase in the number of pre-registration nursing and midwifery students may have a bigger impact on joint HE/NHS library services, but all health libraries may see an increase in demand from students on clinical placements. Since these students will no longer receive bursaries, there could also be an increase in their expectations of what libraries should provide.
The new Nursing Associate role could see an increase in demand from staff that are not traditionally heavy users of the library. They may well require more support than other groups, and resources that reflect their training requirements.
One other potentially large impact on health libraries is the proposed integration of health and social care. NHS libraries have not traditionally served local authority social care staff, but this may become a need in the future, especially as staff work more flexibly across health and social care boundaries. At a national level, work may need to be done to ensure that the core collection reflects the needs of social care, and to integrate resources such as Social Care Online into existing platforms such as NICE Evidence or HDAS. It would be advantageous to have a national approach to funding health library services to support social care that doesn’t rely on each individual service having to negotiate with local authorities.
Finally, HEE will promote the adoption of digital technologies by healthcare professionals, both in and outside of work, and libraries could support this by providing training and guidance on the use of technologies that library users might use in their personal lives, and position ourselves as friendly technology experts.
Date last updated: November 2016
Due for review: November 2017
Group member responsible: JC
