Digital Skills and Confidence

Contents

• Our key Digital Upskilling schemes will focus on
• Digital Upskilling Transformation Plan headlines
• Measures for success

For our service users that are accessing MPFT’s care, we want to ensure that there is clear guidance, advice and training offers in place ahead of any planned appointment.

It is not right that appointments can be missed completely or adversely affected through a poor digital experience, especially when this could be avoided through a greater understanding on how to use the systems we offer.

Our engagement survey highlighted that 16% of respondents felt our service users needed more training and support offers.

Historically the focus has been on staff, however, we know how important it is for our service users and carers to have access to advice and training to gain confidence in the systems we offer.

We will help assess and agree digital literacy and capture any communication or system preferences at first contact, offering training support where required.

We are embracing the future of digital technology to improve the way our services users can access their care, this includes video-conferencing, remote-monitoring and other technologies.

In order to ensure that our service users have the right skills and are confident to access these new technologies at the point of care, we will provide training, videos and guidance outside of their care appointment.

“We are looking into delivering Health Literacy training and Information, Advice and Guidance to service users and the public and volunteers within libraries”
David Bradbury, Social Inclusion and Community Capacity Lead, Community Managed Libraries

The Trust’s COVID-19 response and national lockdown rules have forced many staff to adopt technology more rapidly and more consistently than ever before.

For many staff members, the sheer scale of use and breadth of adoption of our new digital approaches may have taken years.

Now that intensive use of digital solutions such as Microsoft Teams is commonplace across the majority of our workforce, we need to build upon the foundations of our once technically resistant staff. This will leverage the improved digital capabilities that the intense adoption of digital technology throughout lockdown has brought.

Many NHS guidance documents, such as the Topol report, make it clear how important the education and training of the health and care workforce is to capitalise on the opportunities that new digital approaches can bring.

From our engagement sessions and staff surveys we also know that our staff competency needs further support, with 60% advising they need more training and support and only 40% rating their digital skills as good.

Our staff confidence and competence in using digital technology can have a direct affect on the experience and quality of care for our service users.

With greater digital competency and confidence from our staff in using digital systems, it is often the case that this results in greater confidence for the service user in the care being accessed through digital means.

Because the level of IT skills varies widely across the organisation, it is important that every staff member has access to a variety of training approaches and is encouraged and supported by their peers and leaders to invest the time to gain digital skills.

“18 months ago, I’d have said absolutely no way would I join a virtual meeting. I avoided it. Now it’s every day. It’s fantastic.”
Joanne Andrews, Intensive Life Skills Service Lead, Shropshire

We will expand the availability and amount of training in place with tailored, personalised training approaches, empowered by digital technology so we can increase outreach through increased adoption of digital channels for delivery. This will mean staff can learn when it is most convenient for them.

We know what the consequences are of a lack of digital confidence, this often leads to an increased risk of poor-quality data being entered onto systems, or a delay in updates to care records or personal records.

With our staff having greater awareness of system features through tailored upskilling, the efficiency and effective use of digital systems will enable better care outcomes and data quality overall.

With the pace of change of digital transformation globally, we not only need to learn and upskill for the present but introduce ways of ensuring we keep re-educating ourselves and our workforce to keep pace and stay ahead of the curve of innovation through technology.

“Through MS Teams the Children’s Training Team are now able to train even more teachers to manage and support conditions more consistently than ever before”
Heidi Star, Children’s Health Visitor Team Leader

We need to ensure our workforce are given the time and the updated materials to invest in their digital competencies. These are based upon the very latest system features that are released and available to use now, rather than waiting for the training materials to catch up after the features have already been made available.

We are also aware that our service user and staff confidence can be affected by our systems’ reliability. Through our continued transformation work on making our devices and systems highly available, resilient and higher performing, the consistency of the user experience will increase and with it, confidence and trust in the use of our digital technologies. 

We will work with other organisations within our Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) to understand digital skills requirements to access other health and social care services. We will work together to provide resources and support for our service users across our ICSs.

We will partner with MPFT’s Organisational Development to include digital skills requirements into relevant job descriptions and ensure that digital training links with staff job planning and clinical supervision activities. We will also create a safe environment for people who may be afraid to admit they don’t have the right level of digital skills for their role and provide support mechanisms for when this maybe the case.

Ultimately, this will build towards digital training being included as a mandatory training requirement across the organisation when it is deemed the right time to do so.

It is not just about skills and confidence; we also know how important it is for our systems to be designed for simplicity. Digital systems can add to worry or delay in our care if they are not correctly set up for ease of use and access. We need to reduce the number of steps it takes to find the right data and improve the user experience with more intuitive solutions.

The adoption of new technologies that are fully supported with training sessions, guides and support services will be essential in making continued digital adoption a successful reality.

“Digital adoption is a cultural challenge; staff use digital at home but when it comes to work it seems all too easy to pick up a book and paper back up again”
Lyn Charlton, Haywood Hospital Matron, Team Lead AIRS wards

Measures for success