The Topol Review: Preparing the healthcare workforce to deliver the digital future: Interim Report June 2018 – A Call For Evidence

What does this mean for libraries? 

The interim report specifically talks about the need for evidence to support the introduction of new healthcare technologies, and library staff can support the accessing and use of the evidence-base, as well as providing support to healthcare staff that wish to publish evidence.

There will be an increasing demand for knowledge resources on the topics covered by the review, to support the education of new as well as existing healthcare staff.

Some of the technologies are some years away, but there are some such as wearable technologies (for example Fitbits) that are becoming commonplace and there may be an argument for library staff to become familiar with them, or to provide loanable devices so healthcare staff can try them out. Although in most NHS organisations the IT infrastructure is not always conducive to new technologies, where it is, library staff could argue the need to support initiatives such as Skype or other video communications (such as is being done at the Mid-Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust), or other digital technologies.

At the moment, the interim review is seeking evidence to inform the final review, and once this is published the implications for libraries may become clearer but the overall thrust of the review is that new technologies will become more dominant in the NHS, and there is a case for library staff to be given the support to become more tech-savvy so they can support the wider workforce.

Source: Health Education England (HEE)

Link to main document

Date of publication: June 2018

Summary of driver: This is an interim report of a review commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to look at technological developments and how they impact on the future workforce.

In particular, the review will be looking three themes: genomics, digital medicine, and artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. These are likely to change the roles of healthcare staff, and the report is concerned with the skills required to use these technologies, and which professions will be most impacted by the changes. It is also concerned with the education and training needs of current and future NHS staff.

The review proposes three key principles to govern the future workforce strategy. Firstly, patients should be empowered to use new technologies to be more actively involved and engaged in their care. Secondly, the introduction of any new technology needs to be supported by robust evidence. Thirdly, new technologies should free up more time for care and enhance the patient-clinician relationship.

Evidence and comments are being sought from those interested in workforce education and development, with a view to informing the Final Report which is planned to be presented in December 2018.

HEE Quality Strategy 2016-2020

Title of driver:  HEE Quality Strategy 2016-2020

Source:  Health Education England (HEE)

Publication format:  PDF

Date of publication:

Link to main document

Impact on library policy/practice:

• Work with relevant education departments to ensure that LKS is supporting the needs of all healthcare learners.
• Offer support and raise awareness of LKS to those healthcare leaners and those responsible for providing and delivering learning.
• Both of the above should lead to increased awareness in library resources and services.
• Possibility of collaborative purchasing opportunities with other LKS in order to deliver financial savings and fitting in with the theme of de-duplication and silo working.

Summary of driver:

The HEE Quality Strategy 2016-2020 together with the multi-professional HEE quality framework, set out how HEE will measure, recognise and improve quality in the education and training environment. Together, these are intended to be dynamic documents that will evolve over time to reflect transformation of the healthcare learning environment.

This strategy sets out HEE’s vision of continuously improving the learning environment whilst supporting the ambitions of the Five Year Forward View.

Key features of driver

• HEE is one organisation with local teams- this strategy attempts to pull everything together into one shared vision and remove duplication and silo working and demonstrate commitment to an education infrastructure.
• This shared vision with its standards and measures for quality and improvement in education and training will ensure a comparable view between local and national enablement.
• Improvement in the quality of training will deliver a workforce with the right skillset, values and behaviours to deliver high quality care to patients
• Ensure value for money, innovation and continuous improvement in the quality of education and training.
• Demonstration of investment supporting delivery of quality of patient care
• HEE will align educational infrastructure and leadership with educational investments with local teams offering support to Higher Education Institutions.
• Promote a culture that maximises learning opportunities across all sectors. This will ensure that all learners will have access to equitable and high quality support during learning which will prepare them for future healthcare careers.

Primary audience: All health and social care providers in England with training and educational responsibilities

Date last updated: May 2017

Due for review:  May 2018

Group member responsible: LK

NHS Library and Knowledge Services in England

Health Education England (HEE) has published a new policy on NHS Library and Knowledge Services in England.

Impact on library policy/practice: The policy urges NHS organisations to capitalise on the specialist skills of librarians not only in education and research, but also as ‘knowledge brokers’, a role in which librarians share their expertise with teams in the workplace, enabling staff to find, evaluate and use evidence.  There are many examples from across the country where library and knowledge services are embedded in health care teams and enhancing service delivery, enabling transformation and driving innovation.

The policy also signals a move towards developing a “coherent national service”, highlighting a desire to work more collaboratively and across health care systems to reduce duplication and ensure that library and knowledge services are freely accessible to all NHS staff.

Library and knowledge service staff may wish to highlight this new policy to executive teams and senior managers in their organisations.

Source: Health Education England (HEE)

Link to main document 

Publication format: PDF

Date of publication: January 2017

Summary of driver: Applying and embedding knowledge into action is the currency of successful organisations.  HEE recognises the value of NHS librarians to act as knowledge brokers, enabling staff to find, evaluate and use evidence.

Key features of driver:

·         The policy asserts the duty under Health and Social Care Act 2012 to ensure “the use in the health service of evidence obtained from research”. It acknowledges the role of NHS libraries in supplying the evidence base to enhance decision-making relating to treatment options, patient care and safety, commissioning and policy, as well as to support lifelong learning, undertake research and drive innovation.

·         The policy statement sets out key points to ensure the use in health care of evidence gained from research and HEE commitment to:

o   Enable all NHS staff to freely access library and knowledge services so that they can use the right knowledge and evidence to achieve excellent healthcare and health improvement;

o   Invest in NHS librarians and knowledge specialists to use their expertise to mobilise evidence obtained from research and organisational knowledge to underpin decision-making in the NHS in England;

o   Develop NHS library and knowledge services into a coherent national service that is proactive and focussed on the knowledge needs of the NHS and its workforce.

Primary audience: All NHS England organisations, particularly Executives and senior managers

Date last updated:  January 2017

Due for review: 11.1.18

Group member responsible: VT

Delivering high quality, effective, compassionate care

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

The Talent for Care: A National Strategic Framework to Develop the Healthcare Support Workforce

Source: Health Education England (HEE) and the Talent for Care programme partnership

Link to main document (supporting information available on a section of the HEE website)

Publication format: PDF

Date of publication: October 2014

Summary of driver:

Talent for Care is part of Health Education England’s Framework 15, a national guide to action in all aspects of workforce planning, education and training across health and care, and focuses on the support workforce (those in Agenda for Change roles banded 1-4 and their equivalents).

The support workforce makes up 40% of the total NHS workforce and provide around 60% of patient care, yet this group receives less than 5% of the national training budget.

Health Education England is working with various national, regional and local partners to change this picture, to increase investment in the support workforce and to spread good practice and innovation.

Key features of driver:

Talent for Care focuses on ten strategic intentions under the three primary themes of Get In, Get On and Go Further:

Get In:

• Broaden the ways into training and employment in the NHS, especially to attract more young people and improve diversity within the workforce
• Increase the chances for people to try new experiences of working in the NHS
• Engage more staff to act as NHS Ambassadors who can promote NHS careers to schools, colleges and local communities

Get On:

• Challenge and support every NHS employer and contractor to implement a development programme for all support staff that is over and above annual appraisals and mandatory training
• All new Healthcare Support Workers and Adult Social Care Workers to achieve the new Care Certificate and, for those that want it, a universally recognised Higher Care Certificate (as of October 2015, work on the Higher Care Certificate is on hold while the Care Certificate is embedded)
• Double the number of HEE funded or supported apprenticeships by March 2016 and establish an NHS Apprenticeship offer

Go Further:

• Simplify career progression with new roles and pathways to promotion, including more part-time higher education as a route into nursing and other registered professions
• Agree with employers and education providers a universal acceptance of prior learning, vocational training and qualifications
• Support talent development that identifies and nurtures people with the potential to go further, especially for those wanting to move into professional and registered roles

Making it happen

• The national Talent for Care programme partnership will support this framework with a national campaign. They will publish information, support pilot projects and spread good practice to continue building the engagement and commitment of all healthcare communities

Primary audience: LETBs, Education and Training departments, Trade Unions

Impact on library policy/practice:

Library workforce:

Whilst the strategy is mainly aimed at the support workforce providing care, there may be implications for the library workforce, with more emphasis on the development and training of para-professional staff, development of career pathways, and more recognition of Certification as a way into professional roles.

There may be a need to provide increased opportunities for work experience or placements within library services.

Library services:

There may be new roles and ways of working within health services that require changes to our membership criteria, such as more apprentices, placements or work experience candidates. There may also be an increase in support workers doing part-time higher education courses as a route into registered professions, and these may require more support for information literacy skills.

Library resources:

There may be a need to supply more knowledge resources at a suitable level for healthcare support workers, especially as they undertake more development and training. Once the Higher Care Certificate is launched, libraries may want to look at resources to support it.

Whilst healthcare support workers are not included as a named group in the ‘Increase in use’ metric of K4H, this is a group that is traditionally under-represented in library usage and there is an opportunity to promote libraries as ideally placed to help support them. This may be through other means than just books, and could include making our spaces available for informal meetings, provision of WiFi, provision of IT training facilities, or signposting to help and support. The challenge may be to translate this into metrics we can use to show our impact.

Date last updated: October 2015

Due for review: October 2016

Group member responsible: JC

Knowledge for healthcare: a development framework for NHS library and knowledge services in England 2015-2020

Source: Health Education England

Link to main document 
A shorter briefing document is also available.

Publication format: PDF

Date of publication: January 2015

Summary of driver:
Knowledge for healthcare lays out a framework upon which Health Education England (HEE) will build an action plan for library and knowledge services (LKS) in NHS England.

It promotes the following themes as the future of LKS: Personalised library and knowledge services, embedding library roles within teams, demonstrating impact to stakeholders, making access to LKS easy and convenient with mobile and digital access as standard, a greater focus on packaging and synthesising evidence for consumption, LKS offering value for money, and library staff seeking opportunities in the Knowledge Management (KM) agenda as ‘knowledge brokers’.

Key features of driver:
• Knowledge for healthcare builds on the vision laid out in Health Education England’s Framework 15, which asserted that future success of the healthcare system will be determined by the ability to ‘access, understand and interpret’ information.
• The framework identifies the key partners that LKS need to engage with, including NHS England, Public Health England and the Department of Health.
• The positive impact of LKS is demonstrated in case studies throughout the document.
• The framework looks forward to how LKS will develop over the next five years.
• LKS will offer personalised services that are proactively customer-focused.
• Embedded roles within clinical, commissioning and management teams will become standard practice.
• LKS staff will adopt enhanced roles beyond traditional library work, for example, in knowledge management and technology enhanced learning. HEE will oversee a review of back office LKS functions.
• Demonstrating impact on patient care, management decisions, commissioning and research continues to be a key challenge.
• Access to LKS needs to be easy and convenient with mobile and digital services as the norm.
• There will be a greater demand for synthesising evidence and re-packaging knowledge for end-user consumption.
• There’s an opportunity for input into the knowledge management agenda, ‘mobilising knowledge’ to support NHS priorities and using LKS staff as ‘knowledge brokers’. HEE will undertake a national review of NHS LKS and make recommendations for the redesign of services.
• HEE will implement a marketing strategy to raise awareness of LKS services and resources (social media will play a key part in this strategy)
• HEE will build on http://www.libraryservices.nhs.uk to develop a single knowledge hub for all NHS staff. A centralised e-resources team will be established to support the management of national core content.
• Local LKS leaders will be identified and nurtured and there will be potential changes in roles and new ways of working.
• The framework recognises that investors in LKS need good value for money and proposes that LKS can be streamlined by harnessing technology and greater collaboration between services. HEE will commission a Return on Investment study in LKS in NHS England and explore an equitable, sustainable funding model.
• LQAF will be refreshed to align with wider education and service monitoring processes. The national Impact Toolkit will also be refreshed.
• Section 7.E (p.47) identifies a series of performance metrics against which HEE will measure success against their objectives.

Primary audience: All NHS England organisations, LKS staff and decision-makers

Impact on library policy/practice:
• This is a pivotal publication which will affect our ways of working, our roles and our strategic plans and objectives. It offers a vision of the future of LKS that we should work towards and will inform our priorities and decision-making over the next five years.
• The framework acknowledges the successes and current good practice in LKS and provides some useful activity, staffing and funding data that may prove useful for library managers to feed into local reports.
• It may be useful to share the framework with the key players and decision-makers within your organisation with an analysis of the local implications.
• Section 5.5 (p.16) gives a useful overview of what implications the framework has for LKS staff.
• LKS may have training and development requirements to enable them to embrace the new roles and ways of working proposed in the framework. Staffing skill mix may need to be examined by those who manage LKS.
• More changes around national electronic content are to be expected, and the criteria for LQAF compliance may change in the years ahead.
• We will need to pursue more collaborative working with other services and partner organisations, for example, purchasing resources via consortia deals and delivering services jointly between organisations, in order to demonstrate value for money.

Date last updated: February 2015

Due for review: February 2016

Group member responsible: VT