Skills for Health is working with the Department for Health England to develop a skilled and flexible workforce to deliver one of the Government's most ambitious targets to date.
By the end of 2008 NHS patients in England will wait no longer than 18 weeks from the time of referral by their GP to their first hospital consultation. Skills for Health has been developing a range of initiatives around workforce development to support delivery of the 18 week commissioning pathway.
Focusing on what the workforce needs to do to help reduce waiting times and the skills they need to deliver that goal, should make a real contribution to helping healthcare providers achieve the target.
Our work concentrates on identifying competences and linking them to the functions performed in primary care, specialist care and sub-specialist care initially across 34 commissioning pathways covering a number of specialities.
Further work will look at the education and training requirements of staff needed to support the 18 week agenda. This work will capture the use of Skills for Health's Learning Design Principles and use our competences in programme design and delivery.
The principles demonstrate that education and training needs should first be analysed in terms of patient and service need and thus help to identify the workforce roles and the competences that underpin them.
