Pilot and Implementation of Nurse Revalidation in ESR

A Case Study by Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Background

In October 2015 the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) introduced revalidation for all nurses and midwives in the UK: the most significant change to regulation in a generation.

Revalidation means that everyone on the register will have to demonstrate on a regular basis that they are able to deliver care in a safe, effective and professional way. All nurses and midwives will have to show they are staying up to date in their practice and living the values of the Code, by reflecting on their practice and engaging in discussions with colleagues. For the first time, they will also have to obtain confirmation that they have met all the requirements before they apply to renew their place on the register every three years.

Because Nurse Revalidation was seen as a significant change to the nurse/midwife regulation process by the nurses and midwives in our Trust we very quickly decided to support staff through this new process.

Every nurse or midwife is very important to us and we did not want to lose one because they had to revalidate and didn’t know what to do. At the time of the new regulation process it was and still is a challenging environment for nursing recruitment, so the Trust Board agreed to second a Senior Nurse to lead and project manage the new process, supporting our established Nurses and Midwives.

Initially the NMC stated that the revalidation process had to be via an electronic portfolio and the Trust commenced a scoping exercise to review electronic portfolios; during this exercise we became aware that the ESR solution could facilitate the revalidation process. We engaged with the NHS ESR Central Team and compared the benefits of ESR and the other revalidation providers. ESR was chosen to pilot Nurse Revalidation within the Trust at the end of November 2015.

The Approach

When we commenced our pilot of Nurse Revalidation, the national Nurse Revalidation template in ESR had not been released, so we created our own template using HTML code. In preparation for the pilot and to make the best use of ESR the organisation moved from Employee Self Service Limited Access (ESSLA) to Employee Self Service (ESS) for the nurses/midwives in the pilot. During the pilot we asked the nurses/midwives to give feedback on the revalidation process and ESR. It was important for us to have a system that our nurses and midwives could trust and that they had the support to undertake the new process.

Some of the feedback we received from the nurses and midwives was really encouraging, with our nurses valuing ESR as a ‘one stop shop for information’. Training dates relating to mandatory training was easily accessible and helped the nurse/midwife and manager with the process, which helped ‘to take the pressure off the nurse during revalidation’.

The feedback from our nurses midwives and managers during the pilot supported the use of ESR and gave us assurance about our agreed approach to the Nurse Revalidation process. This assurance enabled us to monitor the process, with the ability to intervene if a risk occurred during the revalidation period. This was very useful for our Senior Nurses, who were confirmers as well as managers of those undertaking revalidation. We had assurance at all levels within the organisation.

We concluded the pilot in August 2016, making the decision to rollout Nurse Revalidation using ESR to all our Nurses and Midwives (4,500 +) and at the same time we transferred all our staff from ESSLA to ESS to support Nurse Revalidation in ESR.

Benefits

Using ESR for Nurse Revalidation has us given the right assurance about the nurse revalidation process, and that our nurses and midwives have a system that meets their needs linked to the NMC guidance. 

“As an existing ESR & Business intelligence user, it was simple to navigate to the information I needed. The report provides assurance that staff that have completed the tracker have begun the revalidation process. It was easy to identify those in year 3 of the cycle who should be ready for their confirmer discussion”.

Matron ICCU / Pre-assessment

Lessons Learnt

Communication is key.  A steering group with relevant stakeholders and an Executive lead, provided leadership for the implementation. Very quickly we realised that we should never miss an opportunity to communicate to staff via as many channels as possible. We used drop in sessions, workshops and any meeting that had managers, nurses or midwives present as well as using word of mouth across the organisation.

We developed an intranet site which provided information and examples, but also directed staff to the NMC Revalidation page. 

We engaged as many of our Senior Nurses as possible to spread the word, using a standardised approach for a consistent message. By targeting the Nurses due to revalidate

12 months in advance we were able to support them as well as monitor their progress. This also provided ongoing assurance to the Trust Board.

Even though a lot of our nurses and midwives can and do use IT equipment on a daily basis, it was a cause of concern for some so we gave them support to use the system as well as support to navigate through ESR.

Watch our You Tube video here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZGWphEEQvQ

Looking Ahead

• We are delighted that the NHS ESR Programme has launched ESR via the internet. We feel this is a real game changer, giving our Nurses and Midwives 24/7 access, at any location.
• We are supporting our Nurse Managers to utilise the Revalidation Business Intelligence reports via Manager Self Service providing a robust monitoring process, for the organisation.
• As more Nurses and Midwives use ESR for Nurse Revalidation, we are collating the feedback to share with the NHS ESR Central Team.
• We are reviewing the external learning function within ESR, to record the CPD for our Nurses and Midwives during the revalidation.

For more information

If you want to know more about how Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals are using ESR for Revalidation please contactuzanne Medows, Senior Nurse Practice Development at Suzanne.Medows@nuth.nhs.uk or by telephone on 0191 2139414.

There is information about using ESR for Revalidation on the ESR Website.