Mandatory Training for Practice Staff

There are no statutory regulations that specify how often primary care staff should be trained. Fundamentally, it is important that if anything untoward happened in your practice, the Partners could stand in front of a coroner or judge and justify that the training they had provided for their staff was sufficient to ensure they were competent, and confident to undertake the task given to them.

It would be wise to check guidance from the following to see if they are making specific training recommendations:

• BMA
  • Training resource for GP practice staff (bma.org.uk) This guidance highlights when training should be carried out, fees, avoiding training duplication and recognising training from other platforms, as well as professional responsibility and avoiding excessive mandatory training.
• GMC
  • Good medical practice - ethical guidance - GMC (gmc-uk.org)  
• CQC
• GP mythbuster 70: Mandatory training considerations in general practice - Care Quality Commission (cqc.org.uk)
• Health and Safety Executive
  • HSE: Information about health and safety at work
• Resuscitation Council
  • Quality Standards: Primary care equipment and drug lists | Resuscitation Council UK
  • GP mythbuster 1: Resuscitation in GP surgeries - Care Quality Commission (cqc.org.uk)
• Enhanced Services Specifications
  • Wessex LMCs: Enhanced Services
• Learning Disability and Autism Training
  • Under the Health and Social Care Act 2022, health and social care providers will need to complete training on learning disability and autism, but can find an alternative training package if they prefer

Wessex LMCs: The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism Training staff to support autistic people and people with a learning disability - Care Quality Commission (cqc.org.uk)

Mandatory’ means that specified training is compulsory at the discretion of the employer, however there are many other examples of good practice in training that you may wish to follow to keep all staff up to date.Mandatory training differs for Staff/Managers and Practice Nurses but is basically as follows and Wessex LMCs recommends:

• Induction: once (within first month of employment)
• Fire Safety: annually
  • Fire safety (hse.gov.uk)
• Manual Handling: once then refreshed when necessary
  • Health and Social Care Act 2008: code of practice on the prevention and control of infections - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
• Infection Control: annually
• CPR/Basic Life Support: annually
  • FAQs: Basic Life Support (CPR) | Resuscitation Council UK
  • GP mythbuster 1: Resuscitation in GP surgeries - Care Quality Commission (cqc.org.uk)
• Health and Safety
• Safeguarding (adults and children):
  • e-learning is acceptable. Please see our safeguarding section for more info on this and our Lunch and Learn (Level 2) training resource.
• Information Governance
  • Annually for staff who have access to personal information. NHS Digital - The Data Security and Protection Toolkit is an online self-assessment tool that allows organisations to measure their performance against the National Data Guardian’s 10 data security standards.  
  • You may wish to use our Lunch and Learn for this for the whole practice.

• Customer Service Skills
  • Wessex LMCs: Customer Service Skills lunch and learn
• Conflict Resolution: 3 yearly refresher. You may wish to use our Lunch and Learn training resources for this. We have one on Customer Service Skills and one on Understanding Conflict
• Equality and Diversity: once with refresher if required. Once again we have written a Lunch and Learn to cover this topic
• Mental Capacity Act: once with refresher if required.

GP mythbuster 10: GPs and the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards - Care Quality Commission (cqc.org.uk) We also have written a Lunch and Learn training resource to support this

For team leaders or managers of staff or appointed leads it is also recommended that the following are covered at least once:

Managing Performance Recruitment and Selection Appraisal training Managing sickness and absence Risk assessment

For any information on local training courses to cover any of the above, please do not hesitate to contact Louise Greenwood on louise.greenwood@wessexlmcs.org.uk

Free e-learning can be accessed at http://portal.e-lfh.org.uk/Account/logon