Health Education England (HEE) has created two toolkits to help embed digital skills, confidence and best practice within the health and care workforce.
HEE cites research from Lloyds Bank’s UK Consumer 2020 Index, which estimates that 52 per cent of ‘people in the [UK] workforce lack digital skills in the workplace’ and adds that ‘evidence has shown that this deficiency in digital skills extends into the health and social care workforce’.
Outlining the purpose of the Digital Champions Programme Toolkit [from 2021] and the Digital Champions Toolkit Adult Social Care [from January 2022], HEE explains that: ‘Everyone who works in health and social care needs to have digital capabilities grounded in knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours that will enable them to provide the most effective and compassionate care for patients everywhere…by improving digital literacy capabilities of health and social care colleagues, the uptake and adoption of new digital tools and technologies can be improved, and the provision of care transformed.’
The aim is for the toolkits to assist ‘Digital Champions’ who can, in turn, support other learners’ ‘understanding of digital technologies and their confidence and motivation to use them’ and act as an ‘important tool’ to help improve the digital literacy of the workforce and, ultimately, the ‘quality of care’ received by patients.
The Adult Social Care Digital Champions Toolkit has been created to ‘inspire Leaders in Adult Social Care settings to promote others to help colleagues in becoming confident in using digital platforms that can improve those they care for’ and act as a ‘comprehensive aid’. As well as showcasing examples of success, it provides case studies to ‘help others see the benefits of identifying and encouraging digital champions in their workplace’.
Both toolkits explain the role of Digital Champions, why they’re needed, and how to ‘unlock’ their skills, as well as extensive collections of resources and summaries.
The Digital Champions Programme Toolkit and Digital Champions Toolkit Adult Social Care can both be found online, through HEE.
