CPD & E-LEARNING
Taylor added: “It’s a really interesting proj- ect because it exposed me to a lot of things – struggles and hurdles – which surprised me and gave me an introduction to the NHS for my career. It also exposed the graduate scheme to the media.
“I was a free resource; if you’re willing to learn, eager to get involved, you are driven enough, you will do it.”
The programme aims to change the per- ception that the NHS is simply pouring money into graduates and giving them all the benefit. Boileau explained: “They ob- viously do get a lot of benefit: education, placement and support. It’s a great oppor- tunity but actually it’s demonstrating that there’s a lot they give back.”
He believes this could encourage contin- ued funding for graduate schemes, even during a time of financial difficulty, and hopes it will strengthen the case for its ex- tension.
Boileau continued: “Only about a fifth of organisations do any type of return on in- vestment monitoring on their schemes. A lot of them measure retention rates, but don’t actually look at the value that it puts back into the business.
“A few places are starting to implement this now, to stop graduates being perceived as an unaffordable luxury.”
Accountability
Taylor said: “It’s important for the NHS to be answerable to patients at all times. We should be able to show that in what- ever we do. To protect the longevity of the scheme itself is to protect the longevity of the NHS.”
Boileau added: “We run the scheme on behalf of the NHS and our customers are the patients and the trusts. If the money for the graduate scheme wasn’t distributed centrally, the trusts would have a little bit more money themselves to do some form of leadership development.
So quite rightly we are demonstrating to the wider NHS why we should exist and what benefit the trainees bring to the patient.”
They explained that trusts have to put a lot of investment into a trainee, and some- times graduates come into the NHS from very different backgrounds, meaning they need more initial training. Fresh eyes
With such astounding achievements and 56 | national health executive Nov/Dec 11
Taylor explained: “Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes helps. A new person, maybe a bit younger or from a different area, can point out the obvious – and that’s with no disre- spect to the people already there. Anyone working in an office or a business gets in- stitutionalised at some point.
“When you come in with no experience, you come in with the viewpoint of a pa- tient: put yourself in their shoes all the time, because that’s all you can do, and see things you think could be done differently that are not obvious to other people. If it’s always worked, why challenge it?
“In any business you could come in and spot savings. It doesn’t mean the people there are incompetent, or don’t care. We’re all very busy so sometimes you do miss things in your workplace.”
Quantification and variation
Quantifying trainees’ value proved chal- lenging, but a system is now in place for trainees to record their progress and to cal- culate ROI.
Boileau said: “The challenge can be collect- ing the information. Trainees have been doing this for a long time; we just haven’t quantified it. It is beneficial for a trainee to document what they’ve actually achieved, even if it’s not externally published.
“The NHS is so multifactorial, with differ- ent commissioning, trusts and landscapes. There’s less standardisation.”
This variation makes quantification more difficult, as placements differ from op- erational to more administerial roles. “It’s really hard thing to quantify long-term re- turn on investment,” Taylor said.
Boileau said: “We have finance trainees; sometimes it’s more difficult for them to actually find ways to benefit. But there are still processes that can be streamlined; a lot of NHS finance departments have been going for 50 years, so there’s some old ways of working that can be redressed.
savings, why hasn’t this been implemented before?
Taylor and Boileau said there are several reasons why new trainees can find efficien- cies that haven’t previously been tried, in- cluding the lack of restrictions on a trainee, the comfort of supervision and simply hav- ing a new perspective.
“They don’t necessarily affect the patient directly, but if they’re saving money then taking the next logical step that money can be better used elsewhere. That’s part of the NHS QIPP plan to look at back office sup- plies and workstreams.”
Vulnerable to criticism
Boileau admitted: “We’ve really opened ourselves up to criticism with this, be- cause when you come out with a figure, the first thing people do is say ‘How do you know if that’s accurate?’ Actually we don’t fully know down to the penny, but we can roughly say that’s how much we’ve saved and we’re quite happy with that.
“We had a lot of internal discussions about this methodology and about how it would be interpreted in the NHS as well.
“Sometimes the NHS is scared of publicis- ing, out of fear of criticism, so we often just don’t do anything.
“We said ‘let’s just get it out there, and see what people think, if they want to criticise it then we can have that debate with them and keep it open’. The response has been fairly overwhelmingly positive.”
The ROI programme was piloted for one year and will now be inbuilt to the 2011 graduate scheme.
John Boileau
FOR MORE INFORMATION Visit
www.institute.nhs.uk
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