Meeting the needs of a growing population of older people was high on the agenda for NHS Forth Valley.
It realised the importance of ensuring that the right service models were in place to address the demand in their Healthcare Strategy for Older People. Particular emphasis was put on shifting the balance of care in rehabilitation and intermediate care from acute to community hospitals.
Managers put in place a workforce strategy so that future employees would have appropriate skills to deliver high standards of care.
Skills for Health's workforce solutions supported the strategy by ensuring the planned move from existing care models to community hospital went smoothly.
Skills for Health funding gave NHS Forth Valley the opportunity to appoint a project manager to look at future care needs from Forth Valley Acute Services. Using the competence database and tools developed by Skills for Health, the project manager was able to identify the correct competences and roles needed, design new roles and identify the training required. This work was then used to support the Knowledge and Skills Framework (KSF), post outlines and to inform staff recruitment and induction needs.
One of Wales's biggest health issues, coronary heart disease, is being tackled by a multi-agency partnership, using Skills for Health competences.
The Cardiac Networks Coordinating Group (CNCG) operates at the interface of the three Cardiac Networks in Wales, the Welsh Assembly Government and other national stakeholders.
The CNCG has recognised the importance of Skills for Health's Framework for Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) and has used it in service redesign and workforce development in CHD and arrhythmia related services.
One place where this has successfully been implemented is North East Wales NHS Trust's Wrexham Maelor Hospital. It used the CHD Framework to design a new role of Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) nurse.
With the support of consultant cardiologists and other senior colleagues the hospital set up a non-physician led Rapid Access Chest Pain Clinic with the help of the new ACS nurse working at Advanced Practitioner level.
This has reduced waiting time and pressure on consultant clinics as well as enhanced the career opportunities for an experienced nurse.
When Antrim Area Hospital became an evaluation site to trial and test Skills for Health competences, it was the ideal opportunity for Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Trust to redesign roles to improve patient flow management.
The emergency care reform programme in Northern Ireland focuses on patient access to health services and managing patient flow through the system. It looks at the complete patient pathway from the ambulance journey, into the emergency care department, through the hospital system to discharge.
Healthcare managers used the competence framework to support redesigning the bed management team at Antrim Area Hospital into a patient flow team. Working with Skills for Health they were able to identify workforce competences to form the basis of two new roles - Patient Flow Manager and Patient Flow Coordinator.
"The competences provided a useful framework for developing new job descriptions and helped us talk about a quality service rather than targets. Having competence-based job descriptions will enable us to monitor performance against national standards and plan relevant staff development activities."
Linda Patton
Trust Patient Access Manager, Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Trust
A project looking at competence based workforce planning and service design at Belfast City Hospital's renal unit has identified nearly 450 different competences across the service.
Skills for Health developed a robust methodology with the renal service that can be used to break down a large number of competences into bite sized chunks which can then be worked upon using our electronic tools. The electronic tool can also be used to match the existing workforce to competences best suited for their role.
"Just over 18 months ago we were given the opportunity to work with Skills for Health to support them in developing a methodology to use competences to support service design and workforce planning. Working with them we have learned how to use competences to inform job roles and identify the unique and shared competences amongst our team. This will greatly enhance our team working and the competence based job roles that we have designed with Skills for Health will help inform the development of job roles within our team."
Avril Redmond
Clinical Education Facilitator, Belfast City Hospital
