London Programme for IT

Training the light fantastic

Staff from the Hammersmith and Fulham PCT made 2000 new referrals using their new NHS Care Records Service (NHS CRS) community system (also known as RiO) in its first three months of operation. Three teams began using the community system this summer. More recently the trust's health visitors became the fourth team, joining colleagues in dietetics, podiatry and district nursing. Making sure three teams were ready to use the system was a big challenge for the Hammersmith and Fulham PCT training team. Next Generation caught up with them in between courses to find out how they supported their colleagues in the run up to go-live…

The Hammersmith and Fulham PCT training team had a large mountain to climb in order to ensure that everybody was ready to use the new NHS Care Records Service (NHS CRS) system on go-live day. Next Generation caught up with Nadia Awan, Kiran Hayer and Robert Burt of the trust training team to find out how they managed it. The team wanted to make sessions as useful as possible as trust staff could not give up a lot of time to attend training.

Robert says: “We train people on the system using real data – when staff members see information about one of their own clients, they can visualise that person and it makes the training much more real for them.”

The team also took a new approach to booking – running courses for different job roles every day for a few weeks, and inviting people to book a time convenient for them.

Kiran says: “We recognised that training every member of staff in three teams was going to be a challenge. People are based all over Hammersmith and Fulham and have busy schedules so it's important to make it convenient for them to attend.”

The team let people know when training was available for their particular job role and asked them to book a suitable session. For example, the same course for podiatrists ran every day for a month. The trainers could then monitor who booked on to the course, then follow up with anybody who hadn't yet booked in to arrange a suitable time. They also made sure they gave people plenty of notice – about two months.

“Asking people to choose their own courses also reduced the administrative burden on the training team at a very busy time,” says Kiran.

“Each session included an hour spent giving people information about the benefits of the new NHS CRS system,” says Nadia, “this helped them to understand why the trust had taken the decision to install it. Staff had already been involved in workshops to determine how the new system would work, so we could show how their input had been incorporated. We made sure there was time for people to feed back their views and questions. All feedback went to the project team, who responded to all queries and comments.”

Joan Bainbridge, administrator for the District Nursing team says: “I've been using the new system since April and I like it compared to what we had before. I use it for administration, referrals and registrations. I can produce reports on the number of people who come into a clinic, which I couldn't do before. I've set up diaries for the District Nurses and they are now beginning to use the system. We're still getting used to the basics, but I can see that it's going to be really useful as we get more features and more people around the trust start to use it.”