NHS Lothian DN CPD Resource Project DN Team Lead Karen Stout, NES Practice Educator Lindsey Milroy
NHS Scotland’s vision for 2020 longer and healthier lives for all, at home or in a homely setting reducing health inequalities - prevention, anticipation and supported self-management hospital care - highest standards of quality and safety, with the person at the centre of all decisions back to home or community as soon as appropriate, with minimal risk of re-admission The vision is to develop and transform NMaHP roles to meet the current and future needs of Scotland’s health and care system ensure nationally consistent, sustainable and progressive roles, education and career pathways. There was a recognition that there would be a need for DN teams to be able to explore their current skill set against the future needs to assess any requirements to develop further knowledge and skills in relation to these roles. NES was asked to develop a resource to support individuals and teams to fulfil this.
The DN CPD resource is an online resource held on the Turas platform and therefore accessible from any device. Individuals and teams can work through the resource to assess their learning needs and to access the material within the resource to develop their knowledge and skills. A learning resource aimed at all band 6 district nurses to support with the transition to the refocused role it is also suitable for other community nurses seeking development. The learning resource is organised around the Pillars of Practice model. clinical skills leadership facilitating learning evidence, research and development Each pillar has a self-assessment to help identify priority learning needs and then direct to the relevant learning sections to work through. The time to complete the resource will vary dependant on learning needs. Benefits of DN CPD learning resource strengthen knowledge, skills and experience develop individuals and teams develop confidence increase leadership ability explore values and behaviours support ongoing professional development
NHS Lothian DN CPD Resource Project Peer group support to roll out the use of the DN CPD resource Senior team members as champions Practice Educators introduced the resource in small group sessions to champions Regular meetings with champions to share experience of the project 8 champions from across the city. Regular meetings to discuss challenges and learning throughout the project and to keep the momentum going The resource is also discussed at team meetings to maintain focus
Key Challenges Awareness of transforming roles Time Supervisor role It was found in the early stages that there was a lack of awareness of the whole transforming roles work among frontline staff and so this had to be overcome in order to get buy in for the resource Time as always was a pressure. The project afforded the funding to backfill staff but even this was challenging due to skill mix and the nature of the fact that the champions were senior and experienced team members.
Key Learning Easy to navigate, relevant content Individual teams choose how to work with the resource Relevant for teams as a whole Encourages development for staff nurses Self-assessment needs to be discussed with supervisor Feedback was about ease of use and the relevance of the content to teams Individual teams worked differently some looked broadly at the whole resource where others chose more focused way of working through the elements e.g dementia or anticipatory care app Developed for district nurse nurses but actually the staff nurse team members using and sometimes better to use in team as a whole. The self assessment needs to be discussed with someone with a good knowledge of the resource. Some champions found that it was not enough to do the self assessment alone as they didn't know what they didn't know. It was not until they had gone through all the resources and discovered that there were useful resources they had not previously been aware of.
Sustainability Greater awareness and understanding of transforming roles Teams working together through the resource leading to the use being embedded Highlighted as a resource for new DN's in their preceptorship Increased awareness of the resource is encouraging other teams to engage