This month the report is due and we have been busy analysing our project work in teams. This has been really interesting and insightful for us all. We have also been given the opportunity to present our findings at two conferences! We presented a poster with audio introduction from members of the team at the UoN Learning and Teaching Conference to 84 participants on the 15th of June on a padlet. While at the Annual UoN Graduate Conference on the 18th of June, Alison and I, launched a 15 minute presentation of our findings which will be available on this edublog via Powerpoint.

Updates are going to be available as they occur this final month!

Written by Dr Tracey Redwood

This month the team have reflected upon the recent career clinics. Thoughts turned to how healthcare practitioners received the information to access these events together with consideration of the timings we offered. Ongoing challenges from the cyber-attack together with accessibility of healthcare staff amidst ongoing Covid pressures enabled us to analyse how we could potentially overcome future challenges should the provision of career clinics be supported going forward.

With the team tired from competing demands relating to a variety of pressures including, Covid regulations and IT systems not being back to normal a bottle neck of competing priorities has been a significant challenge. However, the value of the project to our future provision motivated the team to continue. The supportive teamwork that has been created within this project is testament to the teams ability to forge ahead and remain committed particularly during this latter stage. This has led to us successfully analysing and coding transcripts from both interviews and focus groups.

During the next month we look forward to the final stages of the project, already recognising the potential for future and ongoing developments related to ‘willingness to engagement’. Our final meeting with our project mentor will be embraced and we look forward to sharing the project findings at a range of events and the completion of the project report.

Written by Tracey Ali

The focus of this month was on the promotion and running of the CPD clinics. Initially having ample time to plan, the project team was unexpectedly met with our biggest challenge yet. The University was suddenly in a middle of dealing with a cyber-attack and this meant that even the simplest tasks, like raising a purchase order or accessing the clinics booking email inbox, took much longer to sort than usual. Undeterred, we continued and persisted!

Part of the budget was allocated for an online promotion of the clinics, through Facebook and Instagram, to engage local health practitioners in our CPD career clinics. In addition, we created an e-postcard which were emailed out to the Trusts to disseminate to their staff. A pull-up banner was produced, as a back-drop for the online clinics, and a webpage was created to give more information about the events. However, none of the paid-for marketing activities were being processed without a purchase order! Whilst, the university was still dealing with the effects of the IT outrage, we were escalating our IT issues in order to save the career clinics. With a small delay, we managed to get the purchase orders sorted, promotion started and the CPD clinics went ahead as originally planned.

Written by Miss Denisa Rebaudo

We met with our mentor, Professor Pauline Kneale, who has been very supportive and provided some valuable insights into our project and writing our report. Her perspectives are interesting as she approaches our complexities as an outsider, both in terms of external to UoN and in terms of field expertise. Pauline has encouraged us to promote our project, so we have written a short account to hopefully be included in Unify and the FHES newsletters. The team put on lipstick and dressed up for a photo shoot. It’s the first time many of us have done this since lockdown or even the beginning of the pandemic! The photo provided some light relief and amusement amongst us. We are hopeful it will provide an opportunity to engage with a wider range of colleagues in the future.

Here’s one of the pictures Denisa took of our team:

Next month we are planning, promoting and undertaking our career clinics. Banners, e-cards and Facebook adverts are all included to engage as many practitioners in postgraduate healthcare CPD activities as possible.

Timeframes may be a challenge as we have outstanding focus groups, analysis and report writing. This innovation project team will face these challenges and deliver as we believe we can – and we are half way there!

Written by Dr Tracey Redwood

The project has gained some considerable progress since our last report.

One focus group and one interview has been conducted.  Due to small number of participants, the second focus group needed to be conducted as an interview.  These were all conducted with senior managers and, included workforce development leads. They were very informative.

Discussions included that the participants felt they had a good working relationship with UoN and we are responsive and flexible.  However, some reported the website to be challenging.  They reported students undertake a variety of skill-based courses and that there has been an increase in the number of courses undertaken further afield due to more online delivery modes being available.  However, managers did stress that there may be issues to consider, in terms of releasing staff, budget, staffing issues, and getting practical experience on placements.  Importantly, it was reported that there was a need to ensure that any plans for upskilling staff and assessing individual needs are in line with the Trusts needs and are part of that individual staff member’s appraisal.  Participants also believed the need for future training to be flexible and really liked the idea of staff members being able to undertake small chunks of learning that could be building blocks to achieve a Post Graduate qualification (CPD).

In terms of the career clinics, findings from these suggest that although there were some mixed views regarding the introduction of career clinics, it was felt that these would be helpful in demonstrating study options and directing people to training.  Furthermore, it was felt that senior managers, would be best placed for sharing and disseminating of this information, to ensure that information was communicated effectively, but also any career progression discussions were part of their appraisal and the wider and trust plans.

The next steps for us to achieve will be focusing on organising two online career clinics that will be held in April.

Claire Poole

The project is now moving forward despite the pandemic. We have gained UoN ethics approval and are working our way through all the governance with all of the trusts. This process has taken some time as each trust has different processes and application forms requiring completion. We found when we talked to the trust staff about the focus groups directly they were willing to assist. One trust, while willing to engage in the project, when asked about focus groups via email, sent apologies citing Covid 19, almost immediately, as the reason budget holder managers could not engage presently. Despite this we have been getting ready for the Focus group interviews, setting up meetings, sending information and consent forms.

The four of us undertaking the Focus group interviews are really looking forward to discussing post graduate requirements in February. It will be interesting to hear what practitioners want and their experiences of accessing the current UoN portfolio of courses.

The questionnaires have been audited and rolled out to a module and more are planned this week. The students were quite enthusiastic about the questionnaire, saying it was easy to complete and helpful in assisting them to focus on their journey onto the module.

Individually, the current marking and moderating workload commitments continue alongside teaching and tutorials via a variety of digital platforms within FHES. The impact of these pressures alongside the project has been variable amongst the team ranging from intense to overwhelming feelings of stress. Despite this there appears to be an undercurrent of curiosity in the team about what our health partners educational needs and perspectives are. The focus groups will be the beginning of the race and the finishing line now in sight.

 Written by Cindy O’Dell

The project is progressing well! The team have been working to gain governance to engage with the different Trusts and to gain ethical approval for the research elements of the project.  This has been the practical side of our progression. The motivating side has been in developing our collaborations within and outside of the team.  We have learnt from each other as inter-professional colleagues, to the benefit of our own knowledge and to enhance this project. 

We had an interesting discussion about the use of language and nuances of understanding what different terms mean to those in different sectors. The word ‘consultation’ was particularly interesting. For those on the research side, this is a term used when we want to speak with people, but it is not as formal a process as taking part in research, while nursing colleagues interpreted this as being a medical consultation. Working across the different areas led to a richer development of our project documents and a reminder that the terminology we use isn’t always read the same way by everyone. This is something that can be overlooked and lead to confusion later.

Developing the questions for our planned focus groups and evaluation questionnaires was also done collaboratively and again this led to discussions about phrasing and making sure we got to the heart of the issue that this project is aiming to address. It really showed the importance of working as a team and for everyone to have input into these early stages of the project.

We have also had our first meeting with our mentor, Professor Pauline Kneale. There was some uncertainty in knowing how these mentor meetings would work. Within minutes this uncertainty went, this was a special opportunity to share ideas about the project with Pauline in a way that shed new light on what and why we are doing this project. Sharing project ideas and plans with someone outside of the team can feel daunting. Pauline’s enthusiasm for the project soon put any doubts aside and we were able to consider what was going well with the project, where we might face any hurdles and to think about ways around these. We expanded our ideas for our literature review to incorporate a review of other university’s courses. This identified ways to learn from best practice, or showcase our own best practice. We started thinking more about ways to disseminate findings, thinking laterally about approaching marketing journals and not just our ‘safe’ health journals. This initial meeting was successful in engaging our team members and pushing us to extend the horizons of this project.

Written by Dr Alison Ward