Q-SET: An essential tool for workforce planning
Q-SET will help you anticipate your future workforce needs. Isla Cliffe explains
For too long in the NHS we have had a ‘boom and bust’ situation – either not enough staff being trained or too many who then cannot find suitable posts. Workforce planning has tended to be on a sole professional basis rather than planning for multidisciplinary clinical pathways.
The recently established NHS Centre for Workforce Intelligence aims to provide quality research, help plan for the modelling of the future workforce innovation and the education and training needed. To facilitate this, accurate data is required on current numbers of staff, barriers to innovation and what will be needed around education and training for new ways of working.
Some information is available from the RCSLT, Health Professions Council and Electronic Staff Records data but there are gaps. For example, where are staff working and at what grades; what areas of work do SLTs who are non-practising go into; what roles have they now; how many SLTs move into management in acute, mental health, community, education and strategic planning sectors?
To move from a generalist post practitioners require further training, mentorship, coaching or supervision to gain the necessary competencies. The RCSLT has helped with the competency framework but funding is required for training. Training budgets are often the first to disappear in times of financial constraint unless they are part-and-parcel of a career pathway similar to that which already exists in the medical profession.
In January’s Bulletin we saw some of the many excellent Quality Improvement Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) innovations SLTs have been involved with (RCSLT, 2010). We have a role to play in advancing practice and reducing overall costs in the NHS but sometimes the health system itself puts in place barriers.
Lack of resources can also limit innovation and the separation of acute and community services means competition between providers for funding can limit innovation and cross-service working. Rotational developmental posts across providers, similar to that in the medical profession, would facilitate a skilled workforce in less popular specialities but would require greater flexibility with funding spread between providers.
Many therapists working in education are now taking on non-traditional roles that involve integration of services and new ways of working. Research, showing cost benefits and quality outcomes, needs to highlight all this.
The results of the initial data collection and analysis shows the RCSLT’s Quality Self Evaluation Tool (Q-SET) is a valuable tool for collecting information we can use for workforce planning, benchmarking of services and quality improvement. Over 100 services have now completed Q-SET and 80 have started the process. Many have completed Q-SET as a team continuing professional development project
For Q-SET data to be representative we all must contribute. At present most data on productivity is based on activity. We need information in the future to show what the outcomes will be if ‘we have a workforce like this compared to the outcomes from a service like that’. Q-SET can start to give us this information.
Q-SET will be suspended in April 2010 while it undergoes modifications. When it is accessible again we can all feed our data into it. Hopefully, services will then update their information annually.
Workforce planning in the future will take place in the context of the £20 billion efficiency savings to be made in the NHS by 2014. We need to have a more efficient and productive workforce and be able to develop to take on new ways of working. Q-SET can help provide data to facilitate research to better inform commissioners.
Isla Cliffe, Speech and Language Therapy Adult Service Manager, Bradford and Airedale Community Health Services
References:
“Workforce planning in the NHS” Kings Fund 2009
Harulow S. Improving quality and productivity. RCSLT Bulletin January 2010; 693, 7.