Quality Mark, which provided a standardised process for quality-assuring NHS education and training, has been decommissioned to be replaced by an enhanced quality assurance and audit programme aimed at NHS providers.
Skills for Health's Cathy Gallagher said: ‘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.'
She added: '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, which offers continuous education to all staff via The Christie Institute for Cancer Education, is among the first in the sector to undergo the new Skills for Health Quality Assurance Audit.
Eleanor McManus, associate director of education at The Christie Institute for Cancer Education, said: ‘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.
Training compliance manager, John Carolan Cullion, said: ‘Skills for Health conducted a thorough review of the IRaC training syllabus, identifying areas of strength and areas for improvement. 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.'
