NHS England has promised to save 100,000 days of staff time per year through cutting out repeat and ‘over’ training.
In a letter to ICBs, national medical director Professor Sir Stephen Powis, said that approximately 250,000 staff go through new starter processes every year, but that around half of these were already employed by another NHS organisation, resulting in repeat training.
He also said some NHS organisations operate refresher training ‘more frequently’ than the national guidance, which could lead to ‘overtraining’.
The letter suggested the rollout of a digital staff passport, which was announced in April, would enable people to ‘move seamlessly’ between organisations without the need to repeat training.
‘We forecast these actions will reduce the time burden on staff by up to 100,000 days each year with no material risk, with particular benefit to resident doctors (postgraduate doctors in training),’ he said.
‘With statutory and mandatory training taking an average of 1 day to complete, the estimated saving of 100,000 days is considered conservative.’
The letter also called on employers to review the frequency of the training against the national guidance by 31 March 2025.
‘If you are training more frequently than the national guidance, you should use the new committee arrangements to ask subject matter experts to present their justifications for doing so and reduce frequency, where deemed safe to do so,’ it said.
If organisations are training less frequently than the national guidance, the letter asked for evidence to be sent to NHS England who can build an evidence base for where this can be ‘safely adopted more widely in the redesigned framework’.
The letter also said there were examples of where staff were completing training when it was ‘not relevant’ or had limited benefit for their roles, and that in some cases training should be optional rather than mandatory.
It comes as health secretary Wes Streeting has suggested underperforming leaders will be ‘managed out’ of the NHS.
