Welcome
Dear all,
Welcome to our Summer 2024 newsletter. While the summer feels like it’s an opportunity to take a breath and plan for the upcoming academic year, this summer feels just as busy as ever! Many of you have been involved in face-to-face workshops and/or delivery of our accredited courses through the summer semester. We’ve also run Masterclass Month in June, and have our first Summer School initiative coming up in August, with 60-90 minute topics in a webinar format on a variety of topics.
We’re also going through our annual audit over the next couple of weeks, and preparing for a meeting with the Board of Trustees at the end of July where we’ll review our Annual Report.
We’re pleased to let you know that we’re implementing some online professional development sessions for all of our associates, which we hope will be opportunities not just to upskill but to connect with each other as well.
There are big changes in the guidelines for respiratory coming up. As an charity, we continue to work in close collaboration with other organisations to ensure quality outcomes for patients.
As ever, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
We hope that in between all of the many things going on, you find some time to enjoy the summer and recharge a little!
Vanessa Williams Preeti Minhas Director of Learning Design Director of Clinical Development and Quality
Success stories
As we work on our annual report, we wanted to share some of the high-level figures for 2023-24 with you:
200 courses delivered
3,889 healthcare professionals completed our courses
20,704 people accessed free eLearning
£74,883 bursaries awarded to students
Over the last few months, a number of associates have been involved in delivering face-to-face sessions across the country for workshops sponsored by Chiesi. See page 4 for an infographic about the training so far.
There’s been a lot of excellent student feedback, so we wanted to share some of it:
[The associate] as a clinician understood the complexities and difficulties that we face in practice. She was knowledgeable, evidence based and presented in an easy to understand, allowing time for interaction and questions throughout her talks. It was so interesting and engaging - the day went so fast.
One of the best if not the best trainer I have had. She explained things well and clearly and gave time to answer questions fully.
Very knowledgeable. As a nurse, good to learn from a trainer from an allied but different discipline.
We are making changes to the way that we collect course evaluation data from across our portfolio of courses. These changes will hopefully increase our response rates and the quality of the feedback collected, and we look forward to sharing more positive student feedback with you in future newsletters.
Professional development sessions
Thanks to everyone who responded to the survey in our last newsletter about professional development. We took your feedback into account, and are pleased to say we’re implementing a schedule of quarterly professional development sessions.
These will take place online via Teams. The format for each session will be:
11:00 – 11:20: updates for all associates
You’ll hear about organisational updates, feedback from learners, forthcoming plans for course development, and more; you’ll also have a chance to ask questions or raise any issues that you want to share
11:20 – 12:00: workshop on a specific topic
These topics won’t all be applicable to all associates, as you’ll see from the list below; so if the topic isn’t relevant to you, you don’t need to stay!
12:00 – 12:30: optional extra time
We’re aiming to wrap up all workshops after an hour, but we’ll also make sure that the workshop leader is available to stay online after the hour ends in case there are additional questions that you want to stay on and ask.
The sessions will be recorded and added to the associate area on our website if you’re not able to attend. These sessions aren’t mandatory, but we hope you’ll take advantage of them either live or via the recordings to stay connected to Education for Health’s work and best practices.
The schedule of sessions for the 2024/25 academic year is as follows:
Tuesday 13th August, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Marking – updates on best practices and requirements from the University of Hertfordshire
Tuesday 22nd October, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Facilitation techniques for online small groups
Tuesday 28th January, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Canvas skill-building
Tuesday 29th April, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m.:
Open forum – peer-to-peer sharing around best practices and teaching experiences
Please visit the Associate Development Toolkit on the Education for Health website to register for these sessions and access the links to join them. If you need a reminder on how to access the Associate Development Toolkit, please see page 15.
Fees
Reminder: fee increase
As a reminder, we implemented a fee increase for all of our associate work as of 1st May. Please remember to use the new rates when submitting your claim forms. The full list of rates is in the associate handbook in the Associate Development Toolkit on our website. If you need a reminder on how to access this toolkit, please see page 15.
Rates for live online training
We realised that the rates for live online training were a little unclear. For live online sessions (e.g. webinars, masterclasses), the rate is £210.00 for a two-hour session. For a 90-minute session, this is pro-rated to £157.50; for longer sessions, it would be pro-rated accordingly. We have updated this in the Associate Handbook, which you can find in the Associate Development Toolkit.
Automated payment system
Work is still ongoing to move to an automated payment system with no need to submit claim forms; progress has been delayed slightly due to internal team shifts, but we are making progress and plan to implement the new system later this year.
Marking
New policy from the University of Hertfordshire
The University of Hertfordshire is working on ensuring that student work is marked and returned to them within the stated timeframes as close to 100% of the time as possible. As a reminder, we have five weeks from the assignment deadline to return student work, and this has to include moderation; so we ask that all markers ensure that they return marked assignments to us by three weeks after the submission date.
We know that unexpected situations arise, so if at any point you think you aren’t going to be able to make that deadline, please let us know as soon as possible! That way we can adjust our moderation schedule, or find another associate to help.
In any cases where we exceed the five-week turnaround time, we have to report this to the University’s Associate Dean of Academic Quality; so it’s really important for us to continue to ensure that we meet these deadlines. Thank you for your help with this!
Student mark queries
Over the last few weeks we’ve seen a rise in the number of students contacting markers to appeal their marks. As markers, you do not have to justify your marks to students. If you receive any student queries to this effect, please forward them onto Vanessa Williams (v.williams@educationforhealth.org), and she will meet with them.
Professional development
Our first professional development session will focus on marking, following feedback from the University of Hertfordshire. This will take place on Tuesday 13th August, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. – see pages 6-7 for details. If you can’t make it, please watch the recording that will be posted to the Associate Development Toolkit.
Module support
Resubmissions
For those of you who support our students with resubmission, please remember that this work is in addition to the 10 hours of module support that is provided by module support tutors. We don’t expect you to provide unpaid support to our learners!
That being said, we’ve seen a rise in students asking for one-on-one resubmission tutorials, and we recognize that this isn’t feasible. For resubmission support, please set up one group tutorial for students, ensuring that the recording is posted as usual. Please also provide support via email where appropriate.
If students ask for additional support, please feel free to forward their queries to Vanessa Williams (v.williams@educationforhealth.org). We will also be working on setting clearer student expectations regarding resubmission support.
Online tutorials: platforms and recordings
For anyone who still runs their online tutorials via Big Blue Button, we are asking everyone to move away from this platform, as the recordings only stay online for a couple of weeks rather than for the duration of the course. We recommend Zoom or MS Teams: Zoom integrates seamlessly with Canvas and the recordings are uploaded automatically, so this can be a particularly smooth option.
If you’d like a quick introduction to using Zoom and setting up Zoom meetings through Canvas, please email Vanessa Williams (v.williams@educationforhealth.org).
New courses
Accredited courses
We are launching three new courses in Autumn 2024:
Level 7 Optimising Pain Management (September launch)
Level 6 Enhancing Cardiovascular Care for Professional Practice (September launch)
Level 6 Supporting Mental Health for Adults with Long-Term Conditions (October launch): sponsored by NHSE and codeveloped with primary and community care nurse
CPD courses
In addition to the standard portfolio, we have been piloting the introduction of short 60-90 minute Masterclasses in a webinar format, with topics on a range of conditions aligned with our main portfolio. This includes subjects such as paediatric asthma and allergy, and hypertension, led by experts in their fields. The first series was run in June and quickly filled. Therefore more have been scheduled as a ‘Summer School’ in August, a period when courses have not filled historically. This will enable us to test whether short interactions are preferable in the summer months.
Clinical updates
External partnerships
We continue to develop external partnerships with key organisations such as Asthma and Lung UK BTS, PCRS, ARTP, and the Alliance for Heart Failure (a coalition of charities and industry partnerships), helping us to support positive patient outcomes. We will also be delivering several speaker sessions at Best Practice, Respiratory Care, The Pharmacy Show and the NHS workforce development conference.
We will continue to see several clinical campaigns throughout the year. In May, we delivered a sponsored webinar as part of World Asthma Day with a number of expert speakers delivering the event including Dr Ian Pavord, Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Oxford and Honorary Consultant Physician at the Oxford University Hospitals. We are thankful to all guest speakers who supported the event, and we look forward to delivering even more events throughout the year.
AIR
(Anti-inflammatory
Reliever Therapy) and Maintenance and Reliever Therapy (MART) therapy
The British Thoracic Society (BTS), Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) have been working together to produce future UKwide guidance for the diagnosis and management of chronic asthma in adults, young people and children.
This guideline is out for consultation and the final document will be published on 27th November 2024. Education for Health will be responding to the consultation.
We will be holding a clinical upskilling session on this on 16th September 2024 at 12.00 p.m. Details of how to register will follow.
What does this mean for our learners?
We understand that many of your learners will be aware of some of the proposed changes from local discussions and international resources such as GINA. We want to ensure you have the right resources to support your students during this period.
For those of you involved in delivering our academic courses in asthma (Level 5, 6, 7) we will be adding a presentation which will outline what these therapies are, and their application in practice.
Please cover these new therapies as part of your module support sessions moving forward for those students who have not yet submitted Assignment 2.
Clinical updates
Further reading
We have highlighted some key updates below for you to have a look through.
Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccination programme
From 1st September 2024, two new respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccination programmes will be introduced. Further details can be found on the gov.uk website.
BTS: Climate change and lung health
Please see this position statement from BTS in regard to climate change and lung health.
Nasal sprays and behavioural interventions
Review the recent study around the use of nasal sprays in primary care.
Do you have questions about these clinical updates? Please contact our Director of Clinical Development, Preeti Minhas (p.minhas@educationforhealth.org).
Associate Development Toolkit
All of our associates have access to the online Associate Development Toolkit. This is where you can find the associate handbook, support guides, templates, and answers to frequently asked questions. We’ll be updating this more regularly this year, so please keep an eye on it.
This is also where you can register for our upcoming professional development sessions.
To access the toolkit:
Go to www.educationforhealth.org
Click ‘My Account’ in the top-right menu.
Your username is your first name, a full stop and then your surname. If you’ve logged in previously, you will have chosen your password; if you can’t remember your password, click the ‘Lost your password?’ link underneath the Log In button.
Once you’ve logged in, click ‘My courses’ in the menu on the lefthand side of the page.
Click the ‘Associate Development Toolkit’ tile in the centre of your screen.