New contract enables NHS trust to become training leader
A new contract will enable an NHS trust to become the region hub for a training academy.
Cannock and Wolverhampton will form the regional hub for the Midlands Endoscopy Academy after a £700,000 contract was awarded to The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT).
Funding will be used to deliver training but also to improve facilities, introduce new services such as transnasal (nose) endoscopy (TNE) and to develop training programmes, particularly to boost the nursing workforce. Endoscopy is a procedure using a camera to view inside the body.
A successful joint bid from RWT and Birmingham City University (BCU) will develop the West Midlands Academy as the centre of a ‘hub and spoke’ model after NHS Trusts in the Midlands were asked to submit expressions of interest.
The aim of the Academy is to increase the numbers of endoscopists and endoscopy staff to tackle the diagnostic backlog and match future capacity to demand.
Dean Gritton, Group Manager, RWT, said: “This partnership will enhance the Trust’s reputation, while it has financial benefits and promotes collaborative working, regionally and nationally.
“It will also make the organisation a more attractive place to work, with the intention to attract high quality medical, nursing, managerial and administrative workforce.”
The clinical endoscopist programme is delivered over either 30 or 40 weeks by lectures, simulation and hands-on courses.
Medical and surgical trainees, clinical endoscopists as well as nursing workforce members will be welcomed to the new hub.
Also taking place there will be development of new nursing roles within endoscopy to expand the nursing workforce, and upskilling of existing endoscopists, including consultants and the existing nursing workforce.
Training is currently run as a stand-alone programme by RWT and BCU and collaboratively, but in the future will be delivered as part of the academy.
Four other Trusts in the region, Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals, Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust (SaTH), George Elliot Hospital, and Worcestershire Royal Hospital, were successful in their bids as RWT’s ‘spoke’ sites to deliver training.
Dr Aravinth Murugananthan, Midlands Endoscopy Training Academy Director, said: “I thank the RWT senior management team for their support and particularly highlight the significant part Sarah Wilmshurst, Group Manager, played in the success of the bid.
“I’d also like to emphasise the role of the highly-skilled and dedicated endoscopy nursing workforce team led by Senior Sisters Vivienne Simpson and Loraine Mahachi, who work closely will all trainees in the unit while also creating the right environment to nurture their learning.”
The development of regional academies is a national directive following Professor Sir Mike Richards’s report published in November 2020, Diagnostics: Recovery and Renewal, which recommended the need for more facilities away from main hospital sites.
