New Ways of Working transforming the healthcare workforce
We're all familiar with the drive to have a flexible workforce, delivering high quality health through the best use of the skills of our entire workforce. It's a common objective, but how can this be made to happen in practice?
Transforming the workforce is a crucial part of delivering modernised healthcare services. There are many initiatives to develop "new ways of working" across the health sector, and with numbers of extended and new roles continuing to come on stream in the next five to ten years to support emerging services, the potential for proliferation of differing standards, titles and skills is great. The potential implications of this are significant, including additional demand for education and training provision.
A coordinated approach, with the appropriate stakeholders and shared learning from best practice, is clearly part of the answer. Skills for Health has been working with the New Ways of Working National Governance Group, which launched at the end of 2006 to tackle the challenge.
Work being developed to facilitate greater sharing of information includes an online report for NHS and other healthcare organisations detailing:
- database of roles/transferable roles for easier planning of cross-professional roles
- sharing of examples, showing how others have tackled the same problem
- definition of roles e.g. Assistant/Advanced Practitioner for greater clarity and guidance
- interactive web based resources and links to resources from Skills for Care (England).
The New Ways of Working governance and national groups will ensure that we all learn from the successes and eliminate duplication, leading to more coordinated work and better support for new roles and New Ways of Working.
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