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Professional Nurse Advocate Programme

The Professional Nurse Advocate (PNA) role is a level seven accredited professional leadership and development programme open to all our registered nurses. It’s designed to support our nurses to improve quality and experience of care by using the Advocating for Education Quality Improvement (A-EQUIP) model.

If you're interested in the course, you can find more details below. 

Read our PNA info sheet

Watch this video from NHS England

Contacts

For Mental Health and Learning Disability, contact Robin Hammond, Clinical Practice Educator

For Adult and Child Registered Nurses, contact Linda Nelson, Lead Nurse for Professional Practice

For further information and an application form please e mail PNA@berkshire.nhs.uk

Being a new manager can be hard and requires learning some new skills and new ways of working. We've pulled together some things to help a new manager based on staff feedback:

• Get to know your team - Investing time at the start getting to know the strengths of the team will help you in the longer term. Before your time gets sucked up with management meetings and tasks, take time find out about the job they do, but also who they are as a person. Asking these questions in a few months won’t sound genuine.
• Listen - You may have lots of great ideas and want to start on the changes, but listen to your team, seek their ideas and opinions and take them into account before you go in all guns blazing
• Be available - Let your team know when and where you are, keep your calendar up to date and schedule one-to-one meetings and team meetings on a regular basis so they can keep in touch.
• Put on a ‘new hat’ - If you’re promoted in your team, don’t try to carry on doing your old role as well as your new one.  You may find yourself sliding back to work you are comfortable with and finding reassurance in the familiar. The reality is you have a new job and the quicker you get to understand the responsibilities of your new job and the different demands of being a manager the more successful you will be.
• Be open to different ways of working - Use a coaching style, not everyone in your team must do things the way you do. Avoid micro-managing, trust in your team and measure results. It’s hard when you lack confidence, but the quicker you trust your team the better their performance and your working relationship.
• Provide feedback - Tell your team members when they have done something good, and also provide constructive feedback in areas where they can improve. Letting things slip can lead to accepted poor practice and behaviour which are much harder to deal with when left unchallenged for a long time.
• Have humility - No one is expecting you to be perfect and no one likes a ‘blagger’. Admit when you don’t know something, or make a mistake and be prepared to learn from your team.
• Look after yourself - This isn’t just an issue for new managers - it probably applies to most of us. It comes from a belief that everything else we have to achieve is more important than investing time in ourselves. So don’t forget to put aside the time you need to be healthy, spend time with loved ones and develop yourself.

We're working to adopt a coaching culture across the organisation as evidence shows this is effective in supporting people to find solutions for themselves, motivating, developing and retaining staff. Managers, team leads, those aspiring to leadership and anyone who could use coaching and mentoring skills in their role can attend this four-morning course on Teams.

Programme Structure

The course is highly interactive and includes lots of opportunity to practice using coaching skills in a safe learning environment. A pre-course learning styles assessment and further workplace-based coaching practice between the two days further supports a gradual building on the theory, skills and GROW model approach at a steady pace.

Please see Nexus eLearning for dates, details and to book your place on the course.

Learning outcomes

• Recognise situations when a coaching and mentoring style is appropriate
• Demonstrate personal confidence in using coaching and mentoring skills
• Demonstrate coaching and mentoring skills (active listening, using powerful questions, building rapport, giving feedback)

Please note; this course is for use of a coaching approach within own team for day-to-day issues; it doesn't result in a coaching qualification, which would be used to formally coach individuals outside of the immediate team.

EKNM is the gateway course for Berkshire Healthcare Management Training Programmes, and a pre-entry requirement for the Excellent Manager Programme: this one-day Teams course gives those new to managing (and managers new to Berkshire Healthcare) essential guidance on topics including:

• Perfomance and sickness / absence management
• Early resolution and complaints procedures
• Health and safety issues and responsibilities

The popular interactive course concludes with a Q and A session with an HR Manager.

Please see Nexus elearning for dates, details and to book a place on a course

If after attending any in-house training you are inspired to learn more, the NHS Leadership Academy offers a number of programmes.

The NHS Leadership Academy provides leadership development for people of all backgrounds and experiences across health and care to help you on your leadership journey.

To apply for any courses please speak to your manager during your appraisal and ask them to submit a TNA or funding request.

All courses are subsidised but if participants withdraw from the programme before fully completing it, our organisation will be liable to bear the full cost of the programme.