Carol Dobson Programme Director NHS Education for Scotland

1. Carol Dobson Programme DirectorNHS Education for Scotland • An international perspective on the transition of new nurses into practice

6. This presentation will…. • Explore the stimuli which created Flying Start NHS, Scotland’s national development programme for newly qualified nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. • Describe the design and content of Flying Start NHS and consider the transferability of the model to other national contexts. • Discuss the challenges of implementing Flying Start within a national health service and outline the strategy to evaluate its effectiveness.

10. The stimuli for Flying Start NHS • Recruitment and retention • Scotland’s health policy- ‘Delivering for Health’ • New NHS pay and conditions • Governance agenda

11. Magic Beans

12. The Aim of Flying Start • To develop confident, capable practitioners who will be effective members of the NHS Scotland team

13. Project objectives • To develop a national programme for the first year as a newly qualified member of health professional staff in NHS Scotland • To employ new technology, as appropriate, to deliver the programme • To introduce the programme across Scotland • To support Boards in the implementation of the programme

14. Ownership by….. • the people who will participate in it • the people who will support it • and by the employers who will enable it

15. Key design features • It is a national on-line, learner-directed development programme • A development framework to guide newly qualified practitioners • Is based on blended work-based learning, supported by mentors • A community of practice of newly qualified practitioners provides peer support and sharing of good practice

16. Learning Programme • 10 Learning Units make up the development programme. • Each has an aim and Learning Outcomes. • Each sub-section contains learning activities.

17. Some statistics…. • 2400 newly qualified staff have registered and are using Flying Start NHS. • Web site unique visitors in January 2007 = 9,242 • Web site page views in January 2007 = 101,426 • Visitor sessions in January 2007 = 10,803 • Average page views per session = 9.39

18. Implementation Challenges • The usual suspects • time for learning • access to IT / good learning environments • mentor capacity • But also! • Early sign up to the programme • Capacity issues within the service • Making decisions about existing programmes • Supporting staff to do things differently

19. Summary of benefits • Newly qualified nurses and midwives have direct access to contempory learning resources. • National benchmark for all newly qualified staff in Scotland • Mentors can follow the structure offered by the learning programme • Managers can accurately predict time and resource • Improved recruitment, retention and career development

20. What they like…. Generally well – liked website Programme offers good structure for development Access to on-line resources good On-line community helpful Improvements needed … More information needed for mentors Clarity about expectations re local programmes and FS Access to IT/ internet can be problematic More information from employers Interim Feedback

21. What we hope to find out…. • The aim of the evaluation is to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of Flying Start NHS in supporting the recruitment, retention, confidence and skills development of newly qualified nurses, midwives and allied health professionals within NHS Scotland.

22. At the launch….. • “We want to nurture our ‘young’, even though our newly qualified staff increasingly have lots of life experiences and are generally more mature individuals. I want them to see a career in NHS Scotland as something positive. • I want us to be world leaders in this regard, and I think we are well on the way thanks to the introduction of this programme” • Paul Martin CNO Scotland • January 2006