NHS teaching in Lancashire is excellent

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals has been officially been awarded Excellence Centre status for the high-quality skills programmes and workforce development initiatives.

Awarded by Skills for Health, this accolade means the trust is the first provider in the UK to be awarded the highest grade against new criteria.

It comes after The Health Academy, the Trust’s in-house education and training provider, went through a tough application process building upon the recently received Quality Mark.

To gain Excellence Centre status, The Health Academy had to demonstrate a fifth domain, ‘leadership for quality’, on top of the Quality Mark’s four key areas including ethics and values, health sector engagement, learning excellence and quality assurance arrangements.

Deputy directors of education Kerry Hemsworth said: “Having received excellent feedback from our initial application to receive Quality Mark accreditation, our staff were committed towards achieving excellence centre status to recognise and promote our high-quality skills development provision.

“Having been assessed against five key areas, our status demonstrates a clear ambition to provide high quality apprenticeship training to meet the needs of our current and future workforce as well as the wider healthcare sector. Equally, the status provides a network for engagement across the wider NHS, independent and voluntary sectors.”