Axia’s skills passports were first developed at the request of The Imperial College Health Care Trust during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our development team worked with NHS staff to produce the Critical Care Passport.

Optimising Skills Checking for More Effective Work

The Passport enabled medical staff to move between different Intensive Care Units more easily, creating a mobile workforce. It contained all of the required capabilities for staff and information about equipment in an easily accessible format. This removed the need for lengthy skills checking when staff members  arrive at a new ward. The passport also allows line managers to familiarise themselves with the skills and knowledge of incoming staff before shifts started. This enables them to plan how to utilise team members effectively.

Jane Fish, the project manager, commented on the importance of the PAN London Critical Care Passport:

“This work led by Clare Leon Villapalos, (Imperial College Health Care Trust) in partnership with stakeholders across London, on the CC Skills Passport for RSC and NRSS roles will make an important contribution to preparing and supporting staff redeployed during surge to ICU and COVID clinical areas. Providing the Skills Passport on a digital platform will enhance its accessibility for both Registered Support Clinician (RSC) and Non Registered Support Staff (NRSS) users as well as for the staff working in the environments where staff members have been redeployed.”

Below is a video of Clare Leon briefly explaining the purpose of the passport:

How The Critical Care Passports Work

Supporting Staff

We designed the Critical Care (CC) digital skills passports to aid staff in comprehending, documenting, and accessing the required education/training for role essential skills essential for functioning in a high dependency unit (HDU) / intensive care unit (ICU) surge model. These passports do not replace the natural development of staff skills / knowledge under normal circumstances, but are designed to aid in surge situations.

These user-friendly passports are available for staff caring for adults or children who require critical care. They are mobile-friendly and users can access them via computer, smartphone, or tablet. There are two passports available for staff working with adult CC patients and four for staff working with paediatric CC patients. A user guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to access and use the passports, for those who need it.

Registration and Assessment

Once a staff member has registered for an account, they can selected the passports relevant to them and self-assess their ability to demonstrate knowledge and safely undertake a range of skills. At the top of the “Passports” tab within the website, staff members can find full descriptions of who each passport is relevant for.

A supervisor is required to sign off on their proficiencies for each knowledge or skill. A final supervisor sign-off is then required for a staff member to download their certificate, which recognises their ability to safely perform that role. Hyperlinks to relevant e-learning resources are provided within the passports for self-directed learning. The passport website also enables staff to log their CPD training and add their workplace reflections.

Administration and Reporting

Administrators for the website receive access at a level appropriate to their seniority. A global admin is able to pull data across the whole passport, or limit their reporting to a particular region or Trust.

Admins can view which and how many of their staff have accessed the passport. They can assess the skills within their teams by viewing individual member data and also explore and export their Trust’s data. The admin reporting functionalities of the website include providing a visual summary of staff completion numbers for passports, a detailed data export in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, and a Skill Completion Heatmap.

When a framework like the Critical Care Passport gains national recognition, managers can access information that offers insight into the current skills and capabilities of the workforce. This vital information allows leaders to manage shortages and predict skill gaps that may develop in the future.

Country-wide Success

After successfully launching the passport in London, we further introduced the Critical Skills Passport across England. The widespread adoption of the passport has streamlined skill assessment and mobility for medical staff throughout the country.

This streamlined approach has not only saved valuable time but also enhanced the efficiency of medical operations, allowing healthcare professionals to focus more on delivering quality care to patients.

Managing Director Richard Etheridge reflected on recent discussions;

“Over the last 20 years Axia Digital has been enabling professionals to demonstrate their capability to manage personal and professional development within the workplace. This has traditionally been driven by us working with professional bodies. However, as the world has changed because of COVID we have found that organisations are approaching us to build tools such as passports. We have been having some interesting discussions about how the passports can benefit these organisations in their future planning of the workforce; forecasting where shortages may appear, in succession planning as people leave the business and where new skills may be required in the future, thus enabling the development of relevant learning and targeting that learning on the future workforce.”

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This weekend (August 26^th to 28^th) a major international assessment conference will be taking place concurrently in Ottawa and Lyon. The theme of the conference is ‘Reimagining Assessment Across the Continuum’ and focuses predominantly on solutions for the health sector.

About Axia’s Presentation

Axia’s presentation is titled ‘The Use of Skills Passports/Mini-Credentials for Assessment and Planning’. The presentation will demonstrate the diverse groups, for whom we have developed Skills Passports in collaboration with different health bodies and suppliers to meet specific challenges.

Critical Care Skills Passport

The Critical Care Skills Passport was a collaboration with NHS England to support professionals working in and reallocated to Intensive Care Wards, in the response to the Covid waves, to demonstrate their skills for that setting and have these assessed. The passport was developed in less than a month and has now been rolled out nationally and was short-listed for a National Nursing Award. A video that describes the implementation and adoption of the passport is available below.

Microsurgery Skills Passport

The Microsurgery Skills Passport is a collaboration with the Innovation team at the University Hospitals in Coventry and Warwickshire, UK and has been designed to enable Microsurgeons demonstrate their skills by uploading videos of their work and setting this against a competency framework.

TVLC Wound Care Passport

The TVLC Wound Care Passport was developed with the support of Urgo Medical and Professor Karen Ousey and Leanne Atkin of Huddersfield University and it enables nurses and other health professionals progressively demonstrate their skills in wound care.

Chair of the company Chris Peat commented:

“Skills Passports and Mini Credentials have long been recognised as an important assessment tool. For the individual health professional, they can demonstrate the specific advanced skills they have developed post qualification. From an organisational perspective it enables them to ensure that they have the right skills mix in their organisation so that they can respond to workforce challenges. Presenting the passports digitally is a major contributor to their widespread adoption.”

More About the Benefits of our Skills Passports

The skills passports that we develop are fully mobile enabled and can be presented in multiple languages. They’re intuitive and contribute to workforce planning by enabling individuals to demonstrate the specific skills they have and have these assessed. They can also be delivered quickly using a tried and tested technical architecture.

If you’re interested in learning more about our Skills Passports, contact us today.

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‘This work led by Clare Leon Villapalos, (Imperial College Health Care Trust) in partnership with stakeholders across London, on the CC Skills Passport for RSC and NRSS roles will make an important contribution to preparing and supporting staff redeployed during surge to ICU and Covid clinical areas.

Our thanks to Axia Digital for the pace at which they worked to move the passport to a digital platform and to the many stakeholders who tested the passport.’

Providing the Skills Passport on a digital platform will enhance its accessibility for both Registered Support Clinician (RSC) and Non Registered Support Staff (NRSS) users as well as for the staff working in the environments where staff members have been redeployed.’

This project was commissioned during one of the busiest months for the company, however, we saw that there was an urgent requirement, and we knew that our technology was created to respond to this sort of challenge. Richard Etheridge our Technical and Operations Director comments,

‘The team grasped with both hands the opportunity to demonstrate the capability of our core platform to develop user-friendly and robust sites at pace. We were also able to use the knowledge gained from developing Skills Passports for other Health workers. There is growing interest in our capability to provide solutions that help new skills be quickly developed and recognised.’

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