Introduction

• NHS England’s enhance programme is an educational development offer for all health and care staff. The enhance syllabus is comprised of 6 domains and 4 cross-cutting themes which focus on enhancing generalist skills to support the delivery of high quality, integrated person-centred care and to reduce health inequity. Adoption of digital is a key enabler to achieving this ambition and forms one of the underpinning cross-cutting themes.

• The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan (LTWP) highlights the importance of upskilling health and care professionals’ digital skills to optimise patient care.

• enhance has already successfully launched two cross-cutting theme guides, and two further guides focusing on leadership and digital themes are due for launch in early 2024.

Aims and objectives of the research project or activity

• The enhance digital resource guide: a digital mindset, aims to introduce key concepts of digital literacy and a digital mindset to its multiprofessional learner cohort

• The guide is designed to showcase how digital innovation can optimise patient care through the lens of enhance, and how healthcare professionals can embrace and adopt digital technologies within their own settings.

• For those learners who are further along their digital journey, keen to implement digital innovation and to potentially become future digital leaders, a level 2 guide is under development. This guide will comprise digital exemplar case studies, and signpost to relevant resources and digital leadership/entrepreneurship opportunities.

Method or approach

• A national enhance digital working group was convened bringing together subject matter experts, digital enthusiasts and digital detractors.

• Key topic areas for inclusion in the guide were identified through digital working group discussions.

• Following on from these working group discussions and a review of relevant digital resources, a draft digital guide was curated by the national enhance team. This was disseminated more widely across trailblazers for consultation and feedback incorporated into the final iterated guide.

• The digital resource guide: a digital mindset is due for launch in early 2024.

• When launched, the guide will be used by enhance regional trailblazer schemes including a digitally focused ICS pilot in Kent & Medway, to determine the impact on wider system digital transformation.

Findings

• The digital resource guides will encourage our learners to consider their role in promoting digital innovation.

• Following the launch of the digital guide, evaluation of trailblazer schemes will be collated to determine the impact of the guide on learners’ attitudes towards digital innovation, on wider system digital transformation and most importantly, impact on patient care.

Key messages

• The enhance programme recognises the importance of digital technology, as one of its cross-cutting themes, in optimisation of high quality, integrated person-centred care.

• The enhance digital resource guide aims to empower all health and care professionals to feel confident in adopting and promoting digital tools.

• The impact of the guides will be evaluated formally through implementation across regional trailblazer and ICS pilot sites.