Leeds Health and Care Academy helps enhance local workforce

A groundbreaking collaboration of health, care and university partners across the city of Leeds is helping to enhance the local workforce.

The Leeds Health and Care Academy is spearheading a new and shared way of thinking, learning and working together across the city’s health and care sector.

The University of Leeds is a key partner in positioning the Academy at the forefront of learning, with a portfolio based on world-leading evidence, research and education.

The Academy, believed to be the first of its kind, is bringing together and transforming the learning and development for the 57,000 strong healthcare workforce across Leeds. In doing so, it underpins the city’s aim to benefit citizens by creating ‘one workforce’ across health and care – a citywide team working across organisational boundaries.

The Academy is a project of the Leeds Academic Health Partnership, which includes three Leeds universities, the city’s three NHS trusts, NHS Leeds Clinical Commissioning Group and the City Council.

An introduction to the Leeds Health and Care Academy:

As a partner of the Academy, the University of Leeds will help to provide ongoing training to healthcare professionals, which will help the city retain the best workers across all disciplines.

Leeds academics will have the opportunity to share their research findings more quickly, and ensure that patient care adapts appropriately to the very latest evidence.

Professor Paul Stewart, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Leeds, said: “The University of Leeds is proud to work very closely alongside healthcare providers across the city, to train healthcare professionals to meet the future and changing demands of the NHS and social care.

“We hope that our involvement in the Academy can ensure students and staff have even more opportunities to work, learn and collaborate with colleagues from the NHS and beyond.

“Driven by a common theme of inter-professional learning and technology-enhanced learning, our researchers will also help to support the city’s ambition to provide the very best care throughout Leeds’ health and care services.”

International stage

The Academy was presented to a worldwide audience at the Association of Academic Health Centers International Global Issues Forum in Washington DC earlier this week.

Tom Riordan, Chief Executive for Leeds City Council, said: “It is a unique achievement for a city of Leeds’ size, with so many different partners, to create such a comprehensive approach to transforming the culture, capacity and capability of its health and care workforce.

"The Leeds Health and Care Academy is not about creating one big organisation, but about working better and smarter together beyond organisational boundaries to give Leeds people a more seamless experience of health and care services.

“The fact that the Academy has already been given an international platform in which to showcase its work and approach, so that other cities across the world can learn from our experiences, is testament to the strength of the model we have developed.”