NHS Digital offers year-long secondment programme for health and social-care workers

Health-service digital body recruiting for a handful of nurses, pharmacists, therapists, and social workers to take part in pilot scheme

Credit: HIMSS

NHS Digital is currently recruiting for a secondment programme in which care professionals and social workers can spend a year building their digital skills. 

The health service’s central digital body is looking for applicants for a pilot of its Clinical Informatics Fellowship Programme. The organisation is seeking nurses, therapists, pharmacists, and “other professionals engaged in clinical or care duties”. It is also accepting applications from social workers, who will have their own strand within the fellowship scheme.

Successful applicants will spend 12 months embedded within NHS Digital, and will have the chance to learn about informatics and digital technology, and how it can be used in delivering care. The idea is that they will then be able to go back to their employer and pass on the knowledge that they have gained, and help build digital and informatics skills across their organisation.

The programme, which is initially only being offered to recruits in the north of England, is open to any staff currently within the band 6 or band 7 pay bracket of the NHS, or the roughly equivalent strata of social-work pay grades. This covers a salary range of about £26,000 to £41,000.  


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The first cohort of participants will include four people, of which one will be a social worker. Existing informatics, digital, or data skills or knowledge are not necessarily required.

Eve Roodhouse, director of implementation and programmes at NHS Digital, said: “This is the first time this kind of opportunity has been available at this level, and it is hoped it will provide a doorway to a future career in informatics. Clinical knowledge is essential to our work in supporting patient-centred care. Clinical professionals who are skilled in informatics are rare. In some professions, such as nursing and general practice, there is a shortage.”

She added: “[Secondees] will get to work in both data and technology environments on programmes linked to the modernisation of health and social care services, and to the continued provision of safe, high-quality patient care.”

Anyone interested in taking part in the programme is advised to first speak to their employer to see if their release on secondment would be supported. If so, applicants have until 10 December to submit to NHS Digital an expression of interest document which explains their suitability for the programme.

 

Sam Trendall

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