NHS Training App

Last year the NHS decided to attempt a national interview process for recruiting surgeons. In order to ensure each region followed a fair recruiting standard a system that allowed them to monitor and test each interviewers marking was needed. Aab Web built a web application which did just that, allowing trainee interviewers to follow a series of simulated interview steps, monitoring and responding as they went. It worked so well in fact that it led the Department of Health to comment that the new process was seen as 'best practice' for national recruitment in the NHS as a whole.

In detail...

NHS Southwest came to us with a problem; How to use the Internet to help them ensure that all trainee interviewers across the country were on the same page when it came to interviewing and subsequently marking Surgeons.

Our answer was simple; Build a web application that simulates the interview process and records each interviewers marking level, providing feedback along the way and collating all the data to allow easy analysis.

The Challenges

Although this answer was simple, there were a number of challenges to overcome in order to build an effective implementation:

How do we create a process that feels like an interview?
How can we guide the trainee interviewers and provide all the neccacary information without overwhelming them?
How can we provide them feedback and let them know how accurate their marking is when compared to the national standard?
How can we allow the trainee interviewers to provide feedback if they disagree with the marking standard?
How can we ensure easy access while also retaining security?

The Result

We spent a lot of time planning and building an application which addressed all of these points and wrapped it up in a sleek, easy to use interface. The end result is a system allows the administrators to create 'Courses' with multiple steps. Each step can take the form of either an interview or a training session. On an interview step, the trainee is presented with a video of a candidate being interviewed. They are then asked to mark them on the given criteria and after submitting their marks are provided with feedback, telling them whether they met the national standard or not, explaining the rationale for each mark. At this point they can also leave feedback if they disagree with the standard mark.

Once each trainee interviewer has completed enough steps satisfactorally, they have completed the course. This will vary from candidate to candiate as the system allows administrators to set 'break pionts' within the course, for example if a trainee has completed all marking correctly after 4 steps they complete the course, otherwise they continue to step 8 and so on.

To ensure the site was secure we used a sophisticated system that allowed trainees to be emailed a custom 'Access code' which they could then enter along with their email to register and set their passwords. This then gave them access to the course in question.

Once all of the trainees have completed the course, the administrators can view an interactive table of results, showing them who completed the course and who failed as well as their answers to each step. This list can then easily be exported for use in software such as Microsoft Excel.

Ultimately the site provided a huge amount of automation and time saving for staff at the Severn Deanery where the administrators are based and has set the standard for other national initiatives in medical interview training.

What the client thought

" Very clear and easy to navigate and I think it will really help to achieve our objectives. Overall I think this has come together even better than we hoped "

Vince Goddard, Head of IT rcsnhslogo