As a busy junior doctor with many demands on his time, Dr Erwan Elias knows what he wants from his IT: it has to be clean, easy to use and tailored to his needs – and it has to work.
So he’s delighted to have been involved in testing Turas, a new digital platform that is transforming learning not just for his medical colleagues, but for all NHS staff in Scotland and potentially beyond.
Turas (Scots Gaelic for journey) is a learning management application for NHS Education for Scotland (NES), a special health board that delivers education, training and workforce development for those who work in and with the NHS in Scotland.
Unusually for major IT projects, it was developed in-house by NES staff using Agile methodology and co-created with constant input from users such as Elias. It is cloud-based, and allows users to manage their education portfolios, participate in online learning, and browse courses, resources and news from any device, at any time, wherever they are.
Although Turas was developed for and by the Scottish health board, it is already attracting attention across boundaries, both sectoral and geographical, with interest from both social care and health bodies elsewhere in the UK.
The vision of NES is to provide quality education for a healthier Scotland – and Turas is at the heart of that, says Christopher Wroath, NES director of digital transformation, who previously worked at the Cabinet Office.
“When I joined NES, the IT wasn’t really fit for purpose,” he says. “It was very siloed, with different systems for different departments – some of these systems were very good, but they were all separate and there was no overarching technical leadership.
“NES didn’t have more money than any other organisations, so we had to look at what we could do with limited resources. We had a lot of talent and the view was: why shouldn’t we do it ourselves?”
Turas is essentially a single platform that has been designed to deliver a suite of training, learning and professional development applications, such as the portfolios used by doctors and dentists in training. Five – including the portfolio used by Elias – are already live.
But Wroath is most excited about Turas Learn, due to start operating by the end of this year. “Turas Learn is an all-NHS training record,” he says. “It can be accessed by staff and management, and will allow us to start building up a record of training and development for those who are part of the NHS.”
The system will use big data principles to allow NES to see how, when and where people choose to access education, and will be able to push content to meet people’s individual needs – whether they are a porter, surgeon or administrator.
“We’re not mandating Turas Learn, but we’re confident that people will use it,” says Wroath. “We also want to find out about the barriers people face when they want to learn, so that we can make education and development available to everyone who wants it.”
Senior management buy-in has been essential, says Wroath, adding that the technology is being made available free of charge to other NHS Scotland organisations.
“The chief executive, Caroline Lamb, has been beyond supportive; in fact it was all her idea. She was the one who wanted a digital transformation and she has driven it forward all the way.”
User-involvement has also been crucial, he adds. Elias, a second year foundation doctor currently working in general surgery at Aberdeen royal infirmary, believes the new system is a great improvement on its predecessor.
“It’s cleaner and easier to use,” he says. “It’s a very helpful way to keep track of everything we’re doing: our reading, learning, reflection and achievements – extra-curricular achievements as well as those to do with work.”
He finds Turas makes it easier to keep on top of outstanding requirements, such as supervised teaching sessions, as well as showing him what he has already done.
“There are so many things going on when you’re a junior doctor and it’s really helpful to have it all in one place. We can even print out relevant pages to use as part of our paper portfolio.”
He particularly likes the system’s emphasis on reflecting on practice and says he hopes this will be good preparation if, as he hopes, he goes on to train in general practice in Scotland. He and his colleagues were also hugely appreciative of the opportunity to be involved in testing the new system and to make suggestions for improvements.
“Quite a few of us as junior doctors feel that the portfolio is an additional thing to do, aside from our usual working commitments. Understandably we get frustrated when it doesn’t work as it should. So it’s been great that we’ve been able to help make it work as well as it can because we all benefit from that.”
- Read more about NES and Turas here. Contact NES at: media@nes.scot.nhs.uk.
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