60 seconds with Dona Shine
Dona Shine is IT training manager at Southend University Hospital foundation trust. Here she gives her views on some training issues facing the NHS.
How do you identify training requirements within the IT department? We don't carry out a formal skills analysis, but each year we purchase a certain amount of days for the team to receive training. I liaise with the team leaders to find out what skills they need.
How can staff stay on top of emerging technologies? We are fortunate because this trust is committed to ensuring that we are trained, as far as possible, to use the latest technologies. The IT team is encouraged to go to conferences, seminars and exhibitions and we subscribe to several technical publications to keep abreast of what is going on in the industry.
Does the team need other skills? It's all well and good for an individual to be trained on IT systems, but if nobody knows about them or their benefits, there is no real value in them. We place a high value on soft skills, such as communications, which can help individuals communicate more effectively with clinicians and nursing staff.
Does training help to retain IT staff? Interestingly, turnover in this department is very low. I've been here for approximately four years and there haven't been that many people who have left the hospital during my time. I would say having access to training has certainly played a role in that.
Training is considered to be one of the benefits of the job. Individuals are always keen to develop themselves, as well as keeping up-to-date with the latest technology. They might not move up the management structure, but they can still grow within their own roles.
It's also important to note that learning and development falls under the NHS's knowledge and skills framework, which everyone is assessed against in order to move through the pay bands.
What is your trust doing to increase general IT literacy among staff? We run the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) programme, which demonstrates an individual competence in computer skills is an NHS reference standard. Southend Hospital is an independent test centre, so we carry out our own ECDL tests and we also organise courses that support the programme.
These include our basic `PC literacy' course, which has been developed for people who want to improve their computer skills and understand how to access the hospital's critical applications such as the patient administration system. This is a requirement of NHS Connecting for Health.
Are courses tailored to for real life business scenarios? We try to make all our courses as relevant as possible. If there are particular areas that keep coming up, we will organise training to meet that requirement. We would like to run a lot more tailored courses but we don't currently have the resources to do that.
Do you train in-house, or contract out? The IT training function carries out IT training for the trust, but we outsource our training for the IT department to an external company. The IT team requires very specialist training, such as Microsoft exam modules, which we are unable to provide internally.
What training lessons can we learn from the private-sector? From my own experience, I know that commercial organisations invest quite heavily in training and there is more value associated with it.
Before joining the NHS, I worked within the training department of Compaq, before it became Hewlett Packard. Employees were constantly on training courses and career development was very highly regarded by everyone.
I have also worked at the BBC. It has a fabulous online learning system, with courses on a wide range of subjects. We were set goals and placed on courses to help us achieve our objectives or even move into new areas. We could learn a lot by adopting that sort of best practice.