COURSE DELIVERY AND PROMOTION

At time of writing it is now approximately 17 months since I took up the post of Training Manager for Medical Appraisal and it has been an eventful period.

I joined in the early stages of an existing schedule of training course delivery that was based on the established model of courses being delivered on a rotational basis across the territorial Health Boards. Under this arrangement it was the Health Board’s responsibility to provide the training venue and this was not always easy to do, or for the Board to provide all the room and facility requirements that we would normally seek.

Following on from an opportunity to bring an NHS Lothian course in-house to our Westport Offices, it indicated that there could be scope to use the NES estate across the country to host training courses, thus reducing the cost and administrative burdens to Boards, as well as savings around travel and accommodation, whilst also enabling more productive use of staff time during course delivery.

This concept was expanded and tested with courses in Glasgow and Inverness and the experiences and feedback have been positive.

Building on this, the latest training delivery schedule (currently known as Phase 6) will run from August 2016 to March 2017 and will aim to use the NES offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, and Aberdeen. The latter two venues are smaller, so course sizes will reflect that.

Our Dundee offices don’t readily lend themselves to hosting the courses that we deliver, so to be able to accommodate a central Scotland location we have sourced Stirling Court Hotel (formerly Stirling Management Centre) and having already conducted training events there we are happy that it suits our requirements.

The current schedule of courses is advertised on the Medical Appraisal Scotland website under Events:

http://www.appraisal.nes.scot.nhs.uk/events.aspx

Going forward, the plan is to have training delivery schedules that mirror the appraisal year and run from April to March.

FORECASTING POTENTIAL COURSE DEMAND

Combined with the schedule and venue changes outlined above, one of the biggest challenges has been to forecast the volume of training required. The previous model had proved to be very successful, however there had been a couple of instances (for Refresher training) where courses had to be cancelled due to a lack of delegates.

Informal enquiries with a selected number of Boards indicated that Succession Planning and identifying potential New Appraisers was a variable process and, in the time window available to develop the Phase 6 Schedule, data would not be readily available from all Boards.

The pragmatic solution that I have developed and implemented has been to take the current number of appraisals across the country, factor it up by 10% to allow for further increase as suggested will occur because of various Government recruitment and staffing initiatives, and then compare the resultant figures with current resources per Board to see where, within the new five-centre training model, courses may best be provided.

When doing this analysis of possible appraisals required (compared to appraisal resources available), I have also based Secondary Care Appraisal levels at an average of 5 per appraiser.

Clearly we have Secondary Care Appraisers across the country who undertake the Government’s indicative activity level of 10 appraisals per annum, or more. Last year when I had the opportunity to review three years of SOAR activity per Board, it showed that over 17% of Secondary Care appraisers across Scotland deliver 10 or more appraisals, and I wish to stress that this should be encouraged and maintained, and that I am not advocating any reductions based on this data analysis.

But what the analysis also showed, is that the average number of appraisals undertaken by a Secondary Care appraiser is between 5 and 6 per annum, which is the factor that I have elected to use in the above forecasting.

The management and use of trained appraiser resources is, and will remain, the prerogative of each Health Board and the coming months will prove, via course fill rates and delivery, whether the forecast model has been successful in delivering training for those staff who need it.

REFRESHER TRAINING

An area that has not gone as well as I would have liked is that last year I reported that I had plans to introduce Refresher training on a five-yearly cycle. The intention was that 2017 would be a “Big Bang” year in terms of course delivery as it would focus on all active appraisers who had trained in 2012 or before.

Having developed the model further, it became apparent that I had been a little premature in announcing the intended schedule, as I would not have had sufficient tutoring resources to support the number of courses required.

That said, it is likely that the focus of our training course delivery will move more towards Refresher training for experienced appraisers, as the current active appraiser cohort across Scotland is much greater in number than was first envisaged at the time of annual appraisal being introduced.

COURSE VALIDATION AND GOVERNANCE

The new Course Validation and Review (CVR) Group has now been launched and has started its review of course feedback and areas of course content that have been identified as possibly needing review. It is expected that tangible outputs from the Group will be available later in the year and any changes to course content or delivery will be fully communicated to the Tutor Cohort.

RESPONSIBLE OFFICERS EVENT – 5TH DECEMBER 2017

Following the successful Responsible Officer Event held in 2016, another Event has been scheduled for 2017, to be held at Murrayfield Stadium on Tuesday 5th December 2017.

The Chief Medical Officer, Dr Catherine Calderwood, will be attending the Event, along with senior personnel from Scottish Government Health Department and arrangements are, at the time of writing, at an advanced stage.  Further details will be available to potential attendees shortly.

TUTOR DEVELOPMENT

Last November we held the first 1-day Conference for the Medical Appraisal Tutor cohort at Stirling Court Hotel.

The day was very interactive with various presenters and workshops, and the feedback and assessment of the event was very positive.

Consequently, we will be running another event this November and initial registration information has already been sent to the delegates. More information and the Tutor Conference format will be confirmed in the coming months.

If you have any comments or feedback on the content of this Report, then please do not hesitate to contact me.

Harry Peat

Training Manager, Medical Appraisal Team

Harry.peat@nes.scot.nhs.uk