Work has continued on a number of improvement areas.
The strategy paper and action plan to develop pathology workforce sustainability, training and education over the next five years has been reviewed by workstream peers, colleagues in HEIW and other stakeholders. The comments have been considered and the revised strategy and action plan has been sent out to PWEG members for sign-off at its January meeting. It will then follow the Programme governance and be submitted to the Programme Strategic Group for approval, and then be taken to the National Diagnostics Strategic and Operational Board.
We are delighted that the ‘pilot’ of a Pathology Practice Education Facilitator (PEF) role in the SE Wales health boards began in early November, with Tahir Mohammed in the role.
Read more about the ‘pilot’ here/
The Programme continues to work with BCUHB and CVUHB Cellular Pathology to set up a trial training course for limited scope BMS reporting in support of the Bowel Screening Wales programme, funded by the Moondance Cancer Initiative. We are setting up the arrangements for the ‘pilot’ training course so that it can start in BCUHB and CVUHB in 2024.
More content has been added to the Pathology SharePoint Training and Education pages, which form an interim Pathology ‘virtual’ academy. This is being developed to share training and education material/resources for all disciplines across the health boards/trusts. The paper on the quality assurance of the content is due to be signed off by the PWEG in the new year. In December further discussions took place with colleagues in HEIW about using the Y Ty Dysgu site for a ‘permanent’ online pathology academy, which would provide additional functionality for eLearning. We hope to be able to give more information about this exciting development in the next newsletter.
As always, we are extremely grateful to everyone involved in progressing these pieces of work.