Last autumn Skills for Health - Workforce Projects Team (WPT) welcomed healthcare teams from Hong Kong and Malaysia for a series of workshops, presentations and knowledge sharing sessions.
As part of a fact finding trip to the UK a team from the Hong Kong Kwong Wah Hospital, which is undergoing a major redevelopment programme, were presented with invaluable information on workforce planning issues, providing them with practical solutions that they could take back and implement in their own hospital.
Dan Hughes, senior project manager at WPT gave delegates an overview of the newly developed NWR rostering tool highlighting how easy it can be to design efficient and sustainable rotas.
Capability and Capacity, divisional manager, Liz Livermoore, presented on the day, explaining how WPT has designed a selection of development menus to accommodate the needs of people from different career paths in order to support organisations develop capability and capacity in workforce planning.
Delegates were also given the opportunity to hear from Dr John Coakley, medical director at the Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust who spoke about the 24/7 approach to improving patient care and achieving EWTD compliance, implemented two years ahead of the 1st August 09 deadline.
Commenting on the day Tim Lund, divisional manager at Skills for Health said: “It is very important that we continue to share and learn from international best practice and this is demonstrated by the implementation of Hospital at Night services in Hong Kong.”
Only weeks later a group of human resource managers from the Malaysian Ministry of Health attended a four week programme commissioned to give the team a better understanding of the English healthcare workforce planning system, looking at practical implementation on a regional and local level and the underpinning methodologies.
Site visits to hospitals made up a large part of their visit giving the team the chance to see first hand the structure and processes of some of the more successful trusts who use Hospital at Night.
At the end of their programme the visiting team confirmed during a presentation to the Skills for Health that the trip had been a success and that they had achieved a full understanding of the UK healthcare sector structure and that resources such as the Six Step Workforce Planning Methodology was transferable to Malaysia.
We are delighted that both delegate groups found the visits beneficial and we hope that the experience will benefit their own healthcare systems and the NHS.
Already this year we have welcomed a delegation of Dutch social partners and NHS leaders who spent two days in early January with Skills for Health to learn about Hospital at Night and workforce planning. During a visit to the Homerton Hospital they heard presentations from Drs John Coakley, clinical director at the Homerton and the Royal College of Physician’s Andrew Goddard. Professor Wendy Reid also addressed the team alongside, Andy Knapton of Workforce Review Team and Skills for Health divisional managers, Liz Livermore and Tim Lund.
Opportunities like these enable us to share mutually beneficial information with colleagues across the world. We hope to continue building on our international links and to the possibility of welcoming more teams from abroad to our offices.
Delegates from the Malaysian Ministry of Health with Skills for Health - Workforce
Projects Team Delegates from Hong Kong
Tim Lund presents to Hong Kong delegates
Working Time Directive 2009 
