The ‘reform or die’ 10 Year Health Plan for England sets out an ambitious roadmap to create a new model of care that is fit for the future.
It says the NHS will be reinvented through three radical shifts; hospital to community, analogue to digital and sickness to prevention.
These shifts are to be delivered through a new workforce model, in which staff are ‘genuinely aligned with the future direction of reform’.
The 10 Year Workforce Plan won’t be published until later this year, but there’s already a strong indication of the direction of travel for healthcare and medical education, and how this could change.
It includes a bigger focus on ‘training to task’ and ‘harnessing innovative approaches like simulated learning’.
The growing role of simulation in healthcare education
Simulation is an important and growing part of healthcare training and education, and it seems likely it will become even more integral to new ‘lifelong’, rather than ‘static’, learning and development programmes.
While educators may be waiting for additional detail, particularly around funding, there are ways to harness the benefits of simulation quickly and affordably through strategic product selection.
Our new SimClever ™ system, for example, is an excellent budget-friendly option which transforms existing manikins, task trainers, or standardised patients into mid-fidelity learning experiences.
This flexible ‘simulation suite in a box’ is a portable, modular system that gives trainers full control over vital signs and different medical scenarios in real time.
Different elements can be chosen, based on the clinical skills training need, including vital signs, auscultation, laryngoscope insertion, mechanical ventilation, defibrillation and AED simulation, plus an extensive library of simulated scenarios which can be amended and added to.
Because it can be used with manikins or humans, and in any setting, SimClever™ can easily be adapted to meet different learning goals.
These factors make it a cost-effective option for medical trainers and educators looking to significantly enhance teaching without paying tens of thousands of pounds for a high-fidelity manikin.
Key training and skills highlights of the 10 Year Health Plan for England
The recently published plan sets out major NHS reform, which represents ‘a break with the past’.
The report states: “By 2035, we will have fewer staff than projected by the 2023 Long Term Workforce Plan, but each professional will achieve far more.
“Their training will have been reimagined. The burden of unnecessary mandatory training will have been replaced with focused support for the skills staff most need.”
The report is 171 pages long, covering all aspects of reform, so we’ve captured some of the main points relating to healthcare skills and education below. We hope this will help our customers make informed decisions when buying the manikins, task trainers and simulators they need – to both prepare for the future, and continue to provide a high standard of training and education in the meantime.
- The government will work with regulators to identify opportunities across all care pathways to ‘train to task’ with good supervision rather than ‘train to role’
- Introduce new ‘skills escalators’, giving staff a clear trajectory for career progression, with a personalised development plan to help them acquire new skills and practice
- A new appraisal system based on real-time feedback and continuous skill development
- Embedding a new culture of lifelong learning with a focus on skills and competencies that can start delivering for patients as soon as they are acquired, rather than at the end of a long formal training period
- Reforms to clinical placement tariff for undergraduate and postgraduate medicine, and a targeted expansion of clinical educator capacity
- New practice standards are to be developed in advanced nursing, and a review of medical training is underway.
Need help levelling up your simulation suite?
It’s clear the future of healthcare and medical education is going to change as part of NHS reform. Education and training will focus more on providing staff with the skills needed to do specific tasks.
As a supplier of medical education solutions for over 100 years, we can help future-proof your training programmes, using realistic, versatile and high-quality teaching aids, to suit all budgets. For expert advice on your situation, please get in touch with our Sales Team who are always
