World-class education and training are fundamental to achieving the vision of King’s Health Partners. This is a time of major change in education and training, not least in the funding and commissioning of education and training, but also in the delivery and setting of healthcare. The breadth of expertise within King’s Health Partners means that those changes are not challenges, but opportunities.

We need to build on our existing strengths in innovative education and training across a wide range of health disciplines to ensure that, across care pathways from the community to the acute setting, staff
are appropriately skilled to deliver care in new settings. It is essential that the entire workforce has expanded opportunities for training and development, hence, for example, we are providing multi-professional learning opportunities to polysystem staff.

An important focus of education and training must be health promotion and disease prevention, as well as empowering patients to better self manage their disease. King’s Health Partners, therefore, plays an important role within the South London Health Innovation Education Cluster (HIEC), which consists of thirty health and social care and education providers, including some from the voluntary and independent sectors. This wide range of providers came together to enable the fastest diffusion of high quality care and education to improve health and well-being in south London. The South London HIEC is particularly addressing inequalities of care with regard to uptake of screening programmes and educational programmes for patients. The rich ethnic diversity of our local population means that global health
is on our doorstep and we must take a lead in this agenda. Hence, we have established a centre for Global Health education and training which provides learning opportunities to local students and those in developing countries. King’s Health Partners has an essential role in widening participation and to build on our programmes which give opportunities to students who have the talent, but not necessarily the educational qualifications, to pursue careers in healthcare disciplines. Key is our engagement with local school children to encourage them that a career in healthcare is within their grasp. Please let me know if you would like to take part in our widening participation agenda.

The goal for education and training delivered by King’s Health Partners is that across the world, when anyone thinks of education and training, the best is synonymous with King’s Health Partners; we attract the best students and attract and retain the best staff. It is through such education and training that King’s Health Partners will achieve advances in health and well being, locally, nationally and internationally.