Skills for Health launch Quality Assurance Audits  

Skills for Health, the sector skills council for healthcare, has launched a new Quality Assurance Audit service to replace its long running Quality Mark programme. Quality Mark was introduced by the charity in 2013 as an initiative of the Cavendish Review. It provided a standardised process for quality assuring NHS education and training and was widely adopted across the sector. 

 Over the last 12-18 months, Quality Mark has been decommissioned to be replaced by an enhanced quality assurance and audit programme aimed at NHS providers. The replacement programme provides greater robustness and improved benchmarking and compliance insights, says Skills for Health’s Cathy Gallagher, who explains the rationale behind the move.  

“The NHS spends roughly £4bn each year on education and training. Given such scale, it is vital that it is of high quality and meets the needs of the workforce and patients. 

 “Independent quality assurance audit ensures that NHS providers’ learning and development activities align to National Occupational Standards and Ofsted’s Education Inspection Framework, whilst remaining compliant with statutory and mandatory training requirements. 

 “In addition, the new and enhanced quality assurance and audit programme provides sector benchmarking and a mechanism for capturing learner feedback that supports continuous improvement through actionable insights and recommendations. 

 “Against the backdrop of a changing healthcare landscape, the new quality assurance audit programme therefore supports public confidence in service standards and the learning and development opportunities that are vital to improved recruitment and retention.” 

 The Christie NHS Foundation Trust is the largest single site cancer centre in Europe and treats 60,000 patients a year. The Trust offers continuous education to all staff via The Christie Institute for Cancer Education, and it’s among the first in the sector to undergo the new Skills for Health Quality Assurance Audit. E 

 Eleanor McManus, Associate Director of Education, at The Christie Institute for Cancer Education, comments: 

 “Independent quality assurance of Trust education and training is the bedrock of maintaining high quality standards in our services. 

 “It ensures that robust learning outcomes are identified, and diverse learning needs are accommodated for to bring forward the skills development that supports the delivery of excellent cancer care. 

 “Cancer care is everchanging and so the additional tools and resources of the enhanced quality assurance and audit programme will help to enable capabilities and capacity building for future innovation and improvements.” 

 Skills for Health has also been working with Scottish Ambulance Service in recent months, deploying the quality assurance audit programme to review its Incident Response and Command (IRaC) course. Scottish Ambulance Service serves a population of over 5 million people. With over 5000 staff and 1200 volunteers at the Service, content and delivery of IRaC needs to align to the highest quality standards and best practices, says Training Compliance Manager, John Carolan Cullion. 

 “Skills for Health conducted a thorough review of the IRaC training syllabus, identifying areas of strength and areas for improvement,” he says. 

 “The approach was collaborative and insightful, and provided valuable feedback on how to optimise our training goals.  

 “We’re now confident that the IRaC course syllabus and our training policies are aligned with best practice and effectively equip our Incident Commanders with the skills and knowledge required to deliver positive patient outcomes.  

 “We have already begun implementing the recommendations and are seeing positive results.”