Professional and Generic Skills Programme: module content and learning outcomes

Detailed module and learning outcome information
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Module 1 – Patient safety, quality systems and personal responsibilities (one day)

Module aims:
This module will give participants an essential overview of the major components of system and personal responsibilities aligned to patient safety, risk and governance.
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the module the learner will be expected to be able to:
  • Evaluate the relevance and practical use of audit, risk management and governance in clinical practice and improving patient experience.
  • Demonstrate understanding of the involvement of regulatory authorities and the output from inquiries in clinical governance and risk management.
  • Apply principles of incident and complaint investigation using a systematic approach approach.
  • Understand how to manage self and content through an effective revalidation process.
  • Demonstrate awareness of a healthy organisational safety culture.
  • Recognise the impact of human factors and reliability science in communications, care and systems.

Module 2 – Communications, partnership and teamwork: teaching and learning (one day)

This module offers an innovative, accessible and highly-effective approach to enabling students to understand how to use methods such as blended learning, simulation and active classroom participation in the pursuit of excellent teaching. It is an approach which is practical and relevant to clinical scenarios.
Module aims:
In this module, participants will gain up-to-the minute insight into teaching and learning techniques, including styles of learning, assessment methods, how to give effective feedback, different educational systems in the NHS and an understanding of how to deploy coaching and mentoring techniques in teaching.
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the module the learner will be expected to be able to:
  • Critically appraise contemporary issues that relate to the context of clinical education in the NHS.
  • Reflect on development as a clinical supervisor, coach and mentor.
  • Review current methodologies for understanding healthcare assessment practices, particularly the role of work-based assessments.
  • Analyse different methods of providing effective feedback.
 

Module 3 – Communications, partnership and teamwork: communications (one day)

Communications skills are core to any healthcare professional’s concept of good practice. This module will enhance and deepen the clinical understanding of how to communicate with colleagues and patients, and takes a contextual view of communication across a range of complex environments.
Module aims:
To enhance understanding of what constitutes excellent communication skills in a variety of settings.
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the module the learner will be expected to be able to:
  • Demonstrate enhanced skills of communication in complex settings.
  • Develop and apply skills of emotional intelligence in a range of scenarios.
  • Understand the integrated care environment and how to influence across traditional organisational boundaries.
This module will be delivered in the classroom, using active participation, role-play, simulation and patient participation. Additional content will be available electronically via Moodle.

Module 4 – Maintaining trust; medical ethics, and medicine and the law (one day)

Module aims:
This module will give participants an overview of the essential components of medical ethics and law; the impact on professional relationships with patients and the range of expected responses to inquiries into clinical care and behaviours.
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the module the learner will be expected to be able to:
  • Recognise the relevance of ethical principles to clinical practice and clinical management decisions.
  • Understand why complaints occur.
  • Evaluate the role of individual patient complaints in improving care standards..
  • Confirm the professional obligations and implications of probity/conflicts of interest.
  • Review the legal framework underpinning clinical practice.
  • Understand the relationship between domestic and EU law for clinical practice.
  • Confirm the principles for informed consent for treatment/investigation and research for all ages.
  • Understand key principles of confidentiality in professional practice.
  • Recognise the best practice requirements for report writing for use in legal and non-legal settings.
Core components presented in this day include: overview of principles of bioethics and their application for complex clinical decisions; human factors, communication and behaviour, impact on complaints and role as a driver for improvement. Components will also include professional sanctions and rules for probity; update on recent domestic and EU legislative and common law changes for informed consent, capacity assessment and the role of advocates for patient decisions and confidentiality. The module will also address preparation for giving evidence and features of a good report.
 

Module 5 – Management and leadership: NHS structures and funding (one day)

This module will utilise case study and practical application, ensuring that the learning is highly contextualised and real for participants.
Module aims:
This module will introduce participants to the complexity of the NHS and its associated organisations (including social care, local authorities, voluntary and private sectors). It will cover key issues such as: how the NHS is structured, what needs to be understood by the commissioning/providing relationship and what the effect of the Five-Year Forward View on the new Government’s approach to health policy will be. It will provide a ‘technical’ foundation for module 6 (but is stand-alone), where leadership skills will be explored in the context of structural management factors.
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the module the learner will be expected to be able to:
  • Understand the complex structure of the NHS in the context of other public sector organisations.
  • Recognise and describe funding flows, and how these are limited within parliamentary spending reviews.
  • Review the complexity of service improvement and cost containment in the context of the annual budget-setting round.

Module 6 – Management and leadership: personal skills (two days)

This module will be delivered over two days. It will offer a range of leadership skills and development to support enhanced leadership understanding and practice.
Module aims:
Many clinicians have had exposure to the essential principles of management and leadership, so we intend to take a highly innovative approach to this module. This module will cover personal leadership behaviours, styles and competencies, and will map these closely to the new NHS Leadership Framework. It will incorporate personal and team motivation, and how to manage change. Included in this approach will be some personal strategies for resilience and influence for participants.
It will utilise case study and practical application, ensuring that the learning is highly contextualised and real for participants. For example – we have used (in previous deliveries), fictionalised NHS Trust and CCG case studies, utilising financial and operational pressure scenarios and posing a range of relationship-based problems for participants to solve ‘in role’.
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the module the learner will be expected to be able to:
  • Critically appraise management and leadership models in the context of personal application.
  • Demonstrate enhanced understanding of personal leadership behaviours, and how to utilise these in the workplace to best effect.
  • Understand how to manage change, ensuring personal and team resilience and effectiveness.
 

Module 7 – Quality improvement (two days)

Quality Improvement is described by The King’s Fund as “the use of systematic tools and methods to continuously improve the quality of care and outcomes for patients”. The concept of Quality Improvement in healthcare is not new and efforts to reduce the spread of disease and reorganise services to provide better patient care have been evident for almost 200 years.
Learning from industry, healthcare systems around the world developed structured approaches to improvements that can be learned and applied in any setting; these Quality Improvement approaches continue to provide the mechanism by which both care and productivity can be improved.
Module aims:
This 2-day module will introduce you to key components needed to sustain transformative change through the use of the Change Model for Health and Care, as well as the essential tools of Quality Improvement.
Throughout this module you will be encouraged to apply the tools to practical scenarios so that you develop a clear understanding of how they work and the confidence to apply them in your own setting.
Learning outcomes:
At the end of this module, you will be able to:
  • better understand the problem you are trying to solve through the use of data and process mapping,
  • generate, organise and prioritise ideas for change through the use of creative thinking and driver diagrams,
  • systematically and quickly test changes using the Model for Improvement,
  • apply theories of change leadership to service improvement challenges.