Unit Four

Personal and professional development of health care assistants

Unit key benefits

Reading this unit will:

help you to understand the benefits of an effective personal development and appraisal process
help you to understand how the responsibilities of PCTs, employers and the individual overlap.

What is personal and professional development?

Personal and professional development is a continual process of evaluating learning needs and planning learning to meet those needs. This is underpinned by a system of regular appraisal to review progress and plan future actions. Documenting this process in a personal development plan (PDP) helps the employee and the practice to prioritise and monitor the development process, and to take appropriate action to support the individual.

Improving the skills of the practice workforce benefits the practice, the patients and the NHS. PDPs are essential for demonstrating clinical governance and are an integral part of the risk-management strategy for the practice.

Practices using PDPs will have a greater chance of reaching quality and outcomes framework (QOF) targets and will employ resources efficiently by using the skill mix of their staff effectively. Practices will also be able to plan for the future retention and hiring of staff.
PDPs help individual staff, the team and the practice to develop and maintain the skills, knowledge and attitudes needed to deliver high-quality services in primary care.

Measuring performance

The success of any clinical service is largely determined by the performance of its human resource – that is the people working in general practice. The same can be said of any successful business.

The business needs information about its staff concerning:

their performance in the job
their potential
their education, training and development needs.

The individuals need to know:

what is expected of them
how they are perceived to have performed
how they are valued as members of the team
whether there is anything they could do to improve their performance or to develop their careers.

Personal development reviews (appraisals) should help the business become even more successful by helping staff to consolidate and improve on their good performance, while identifying areas where further development may be necessary.

Time and resources are needed to make an appraisal system a success, but appraisal will also identify issues that will require additional investment by the NHS in education and organisational infrastructure. The responsibilities of a member of staff, the practice employer and PCT overlap and this highlights where resources should be shared and development plans overlap – all moving towards improving patient care (see Figure: How the responsibilities of PCTs, employers and the individual overlap).

How the responsibilities of PCTs, employers and the individual overlap

Personal development plans

All practice staff will have PDPs in place with the ultimate aim of maintaining standards of patient care.

The key points that should be covered at a review of a PDP include actions to:

maintain skills and levels of service to patients in general practice
develop or acquire new skills for the benefit of patients and to relieve pressure on other staff
change or improve existing practice as required by the development needs of the practice, for patients and the priorities of the PCT.

Example: Personal development plans in practice

Linda records in her PDP that she is often asked for information leaflets on subjects such as hypertension, cholesterol and immunisation as part of her role as a health care assistant (HCA). She has to tell patients to ask the nurse or doctor for leaflets. She has talked about this in her HCA forum that meets every 3 months and finds that another HCA prints out the patient information leaflets (PILS) from the link to Prodigy on the computer. At the review of her PDP, she discussed how she could learn to print out PILS to benefit patients and reduce the work of the nurse and doctor. The practice manager arranged an in-house session to help her to find her way around Prodigy and learn how to print out information leaflets. Linda makes a record of the instructions for this activity and keeps this in her folder with her PDP. Over the next 3 months, she keeps a record of what leaflets she prints out to demonstrate that she is competent at this new skill and that it is relevant to her post.

Career development guidance

There are a number of documents that are used to guide the career development of NHS staff.

NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework and the Skills Escalator – form the basis for the career development of all staff in the NHS, including HCAs.
Agenda for Change – provides a way of establishing the level at which staff are functioning within their job and ensuring that information about the knowledge and skills in the present job are up to date. Implementation of Agenda for Change is voluntary in general practice. The Department of Health has set up a working group, which includes representaion from a PCT early implementer site and the Royal College of Nursing, to consider how best to support implementation. A guide to implementation is in preparation.
Investing in General Practice: the New GMS Contract – emphasises the principles for improving employment practices and is a replacement to the Whitley Council terms of service.

Summary

Personal and professional development is a continual process of evaluating learning needs and planning learning to meet those needs.

A personal development review is an opportunity to review performance and recognise achievements.
A personal development review identifies clear targets for personal and professional development.