1. NSHCS Education and Training Quality
Jennie Bell, Professional Lead,
Cellular Science and Genomics

2. Providing Quality Assured Training
The National School for Healthcare Science accreditation team is responsible for ensuring training standards are met for:
Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) who provide the academic component
Work-based placement providers who support learning in the working environment
Process is rigorous and comprehensive to ensure all training is of the highest quality in terms of academic content, trainee experience and patient focus.

3. Headline numbers Work based training providers (STP) Approx 600
HEIs (undergraduate)
76 BSc degrees(PTP)
from 22 providers
HEIs (postgraduate)
42 postgraduate degrees (STP and HSST) from 10 providers
Workplace includes genetics pilot 2011/12 and recent genomic counselling approvals

4. Standards NSHCS accreditation standards map to:
Health Education England (HEE) Quality Framework
Academy for Healthcare Science Standards, Standards of Proficiency and Good Scientific Practice
Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) standards
Increasingly aligned with diagnostic services accreditation
Standards aren’t developed in isolation – School looks to reflect all relevant standards in its own standards and processes

5. NSHCS accreditation team
Small team of permanent staff
Independent panels including
Senior academics for HEI accreditation
Scientific advisors
Lay representatives
Lay representatives play a key part and are central to ethos of Modernising Scientific Careers

6. Priorities
HEI accreditation is well established, and HEIs scrutinised through other channels
Many training departments have had professional body approval/accreditation, BUT
Training departments in some disciplines have little history of quality assessment of training function
None were previously quality monitored specifically for Scientist Training Programmes (STP), which has its own particular requirements
So the rest of this presentation will focus on accreditation of training departments.

7. Work-based training providers
Team established July 2014
Programme of accreditation started in earnest September 2014
Number of providers increased year on year
Cohort
Number of training centres
2014
428
2015
537
2016
600

8. Simple process
Self assessment form completed by the training department, against accreditation standards
Evaluation by NSHCS
Accredit with or without conditions, or visit
Suggest if you have time say a few words about visits – panel, full day, review docs, talk to training staff, collegial, helpful, not trying to exclude, trying to ensure they offer the best training they can.

9. Panel visit Full day review documentation
talk to training staff and trainees
collegial, helpful
Support departments to be the best they can be
Share good practice.

10. Outcomes Currently 350 accredited departments Outcome %
Accredited without action plan
12%
Accredited with action plan
63%
Referred to visit
23%
Accredited by other means (e.g. genomics programme) 2%
Note – 23% referred to visit is a significant proportion

11. Action plans following desktop review
Actions most frequently required:
Training plan
Patient & Public Involvement
Effective communication (with the HEI)
Of thos

12. ‘Red flags’ for panel visit: one or a combination of
New training department (no previous experience of comparable schemes)
Request by Trust
Concerns identified from analysis of self-assessment
Concerns identified in response to action plan
Soft intelligence
Trainee not progressing with OLAT/failing OSFA
Issues raised by trainee
Note – ‘new training dept’ includes genetics pilot depts – practice at the time was to visit them all – hence ‘new department’ category accounts for a large proportion of visits

13. Outcomes of panel visits
Where conditions applied, most commonly about
• training plan
• inter-professional learning opportunities
• patient and public involvement

14. Single most frequent fault Advice/guidance produced by NSHCS
Training plans
Single most frequent fault
Advice/guidance produced by NSHCS
Greatest benefit to providers in preparing for trainee
Best indication of readiness (e.g. for local commissioning leads)
Training plan illustration is from the help book for training centres – template for training plan/indicative contents list is downloadable from accreditation pages of the NSHCS website

15. If accreditation declined
No new trainees
Existing trainees – robust support plan or withdrawn from department
NSHCS works with employers and HEE local commissioners
Referred where necessary to Post-graduate Dean or Directorate of Education and Quality (DEQ)
If you have time mention the helpbook for training centres!

16. Summary
Work based providers across all of Healthcare Science are delivering high quality training.
HEIs are providing high quality academic education
Work is on-going to make sure that all departments have the relevant training accreditation.

17. Thank you NSHCS@hee.nhs.uk