Historically BDCFT have not had a central repository to capture both formal and informal CPD activity across the organisation which had potentially reduced the ability to capture work as a product of CPD that could be nurtured and developed to feed into continued service improvement/innovation/income generation . This became the catalyst for the identification of the roles needed to enable a new support mechanism hosted from a dedicated page on the trust intranet called the ACORN project.
A advancing practice through service evaluation C continuous professional development (CPD) repository O outreach library services R research N nurturing and navigating
The Nurse Development Team, Library, Research and Development and Clinical Audit came together to form a collaborative named the ACORN project in May 2017.
The collaborative brought together some key skill sets which afforded the organisation an opportunity to capture activity and identify projects that could be;
- supported to take forward within the trust as part of service development - signposting into existing business support mechanisms if a potential piece of innovation/income generation work
- supported to be written up for publication - developed into a poster for conference events The team also endeavour to support new ideas in terms of working up into proposal format and signpost to potential sources of CPD funding streams both internally and externally. . .
What difference has this made? - The project has now started to collate a live register of all types of CPD happening across the organisation.
A live and transparent CPD repository which is overarching across all professions now captures via a self service portal all formal CPD activity eg modules, disserations but also practice based studies.
The repository allows the trust to review what is being done, by whom and how the ACORN project team will support to take the outputs further to enable improvement in care, services, new ways of working and personal recognition for that staff member