Paramedic apprenticeship

Successful applications will have to demonstrate all of the following, proof of which will be required as part of the selection process:

–       A minimum of two years’ experience as an ECA, ambulance practitioner or technician as at the commencement of the bridging module for the cohort you are applying for;

–       GCSE Grade A-C in Maths and English, or the equivalent Functional Skills certificate. You will need to be able to evidence your qualifications as at the commencement of the apprenticeship for the cohort you are applying for;

–       A minimum contract of 30 hours per week.

The requirement for the GCSE/Functional Skills or an equivalent qualification is an essential requirement to progress on this course. If you do not currently hold the above qualifications, you can contact your local college to find out how you can obtain these, alternatively you can look online – Improve your English, maths and IT skills – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

As a formal apprenticeship, the programme will be fully funded through the Apprenticeship Levy. The intention of the apprenticeship is to provide a development pathway to paramedic and retain our people.

There is however a prerequisite module (bridging course) to be completed prior to commencement on the apprenticeship and this cannot be funded via the levy. This will need to be self-funded at the cost of £1,550. The Trust can offer a salary deduction repayment scheme for this should you wish to utilise it; it will be repaid directed from your salary at a rate of £125 per month, for 12 months and repayment would commence from the start of the bridging course. If you are able to self-fund this as a lump sum, you can pay this way. You cannot fund the bridging course with student finance.

Should you fail the course, or withdraw from the course at any point prior to completion, there will be a requirement to repay a proportion of the associated costs.

You will also be required to repay any remaining amount due for the bridging course that has not already been repaid via salary deduction.

If for reasons other than redundancy, end of a fixed term contract or ill health retirement you leave the Trust’s employ within 24 months of completing a course provided or funded by the Trust you may be required to reimburse some of the costs associated with this course. An individual discussion will take place to advise you on any associated costs. Please be aware that the Trust may recover monies owed from any salary received during your notice period. The Trust will recover up to 50% of your final salary if required to recover training costs. Any balance outstanding after this will be invoiced to you by our Payroll Department.

In the format that this course will be delivered, you must be contracted for at least 30 hours per week in order to fulfil the requirements of the course as set by the Education Skills and Funding Agency.

Working less than 30 hours per week does not preclude you from being eligible for the apprenticeship, however to accommodate the learning on less than 30 hours per week requires an increased delivery duration under the apprenticeship rules. Therefore we are unable to facilitate cohorts with a mixed of working hours of 30 hours+, and less than 30 hours.

The requirement to work 30 hours is a requirement to meet the apprenticeship standard, as set by the Education Skills and Funding Agency. In order to fulfil this requirement, we can only take into account your contracted hours, as overtime cannot be guaranteed for the entirety of the course.

The ability to increase your working hours will be dependent on workforce requirements, establishment and vacancy rates in your area. You should speak to your county commander in the first instance.

You will need to ensure that any approved increase in hours is contractually in place as at the commencement of the apprenticeship for the cohort you are applying for.

Teaching components will be delivered in the SWAST region without the need to travel to Cumbria and will include.

·         41 academic days per year (mixture of delivery methods e.g. lecture, simulations, virtual learning etc.) – these days will be delivered in block week sessions whereby you will be booked for designated university days for a week at a time; this will help with your consolidation of learning and allow flexibility for additional placements in SWASFT

·         5 days of non-ambulance placements per year

·         Completion of a portfolio

·         Requirement to undertake additional study in own time

The proposed modules (subject to validation) are:

Level 5 – Year 1 of the two-year programme

·       Developing clinical care, judgement and competence in paramedic practice

·       Pre-hospital recognition & management of acute illness and long-term conditions

·       Pre-hospital care & management of trauma and environmental emergencies

·       Pre-hospital care of women and children’s health

·       Research Methods

Level 6 – Year 2 of the 2-year programme

·         Enhancing clinical practice & decision making for the contemporary paramedic

·         Preparing the professional practitioner

·         Holistic approach to patient health & wellbeing

·         Understanding primary and urgent care

·         Dissertation

Prior to the apprenticeship programme, you will also need to complete a short period of bridging learning. This will be in the form of seven or eight face-to-face (or virtual) days of learning, giving you the skills to take away to develop a portfolio of evidence and testimonies, concluding with a final academic piece of writing.

On successful completion of the apprenticeship, you will have a BSc Hons in Paramedic Science with eligibility to apply to the HCPC for registration as a paramedic.

Placements and practice sessions will be delivered regionally, within the SWAST area.

During training, you will remain in your substantive role, and therefore your salary will remain the same.

Under the new pay deal agreement, any member of staff who has a change in role after 1 September 2018 will move from Annex 5 (e) to Section 2 from the start of their new role.

Therefore there will not be any automatic change to your unsocial hours payments whilst you are employed as an ECA and undertaking the programme, however you will move to Section 2 unsocial hours arrangements on commencement into an NQP position. However please see Q23 regarding possible changes to base stations and lines, which may impact on your unsocial hours payments.

Pay deal national documentation is available at http://www.nhsemployers.org/2018contract

The entry requirements for this programme are set by the University of Cumbria, and require an ECA to be working for an NHS Ambulance Trust. Therefore, we are unable to accept other experience such as Hub, community responder, fire co-responder experience in place.

This experience also needs to be ‘contemporary’. If you have recent experience as an ECA, but have not worked for the last two years as an ECA then your application would need to be reviewed by the University of Cumbria on an individual basis.

Experience as an ECA from outside of SWAST will need to be reviewed on an individual basis, and acceptability will be dependent on which Trust you were working with, and that Trust’s ECA training course content.

Your period of ECA training can count towards satisfying the experience requirement.

This is always a good idea and will help evidence that you are committed to progressing.

No. Both Maths and English are required to be standalone qualifications and not form part of another qualification. This is set by the Education Funding & Skills Agency for the Paramedic Apprenticeship Programme.

For further information regarding qualifications, click on the link here – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/english-and-maths-requirements-in-apprenticeship-standards-at-level-2-and-above

Within the apprenticeship programme you will be required to attend five non-ambulance based placement days in each academic year.

Placement days will be arranged by our practice placement team in liaison with ROC students.  Placement opportunities are offered within several departments across the Trust, such as Tiverton UCC, HART, SPUEC shifts and, when available, the Clinical Hubs.

The non-ambulance placements will not be hosted by any other trust, meaning there are no maternity, community, primary, acute care or theatre placements.

You will be required to attend seven or eight days of face-to-face time as part of the bridging module. These days must be covered from your ‘own time’ and therefore with rest days, annual leave, TOIL etc.

There are 46 days of abstraction allocated to the apprenticeship study per year, which will account for all the contact time required. These will be covered within your contracted hours and therefore you will not be required to use your ‘own time’ for this contact time. These days will be calculated as 7.5 hour days.

There will, however, be an expectation that you will need to do some study in your own time as part of your achievement of the apprenticeship.

You will have a nominated practice educator who will support you throughout the program.

Practice educators must have a mentorship qualification and attend the yearly updates.  As you are on a relief rota, there is no expectation for your practice educator to work shifts with you. You will be required to evidence your progress and clinical skills in your portfolio and demonstrate this to your practice educator for any sign-off.

The selection of appropriate practice educators will be managed by the Learning and Development team. Your practice educator may not be your current/regular crewmate.

The HCPC requirements for this programme are that a broad and varied range of clinical exposure and support is provided to the learner. In order to achieve this without placements external to SWAST, it will be necessary for you to be flexible to work from a variety of locations and with a range of professional colleagues.

Due to course abstraction requirements there will be significant disruption to any existing rota pattern, and therefore to provide stability you will be required to move into relief on commencement of the full apprenticeship programme. You will remain on your existing arrangements for the duration of the bridging programme.

If you are on Section 2 you will continue to be paid as such.

If you are on Annex E, you will receive unsocial pay at 21% regardless of station, from the point of commencement on the apprenticeship programme. You will move onto Section 2 at the point of completion of the apprenticeship, when you move into an NQP position.

In the unfortunate circumstance that you need to withdraw from or fail the course and you have relinquished your ECA rota line, this will not have been left open for you to return. This is because the expectation is that you will successfully complete the course and move into an NQP role, not returning to your previous ECA line.

If planning to embark on this course you should do so on the understanding that you will be expected to work flexibly in order to achieve the Apprenticeship requirements. This will mean:

·         You will have to move away from your current line and into relief;

·         Your existing line will not be protected.

On successful completion of the course you will be offered a paramedic vacancy as soon as one is available, however the location of vacancies at the time you will qualify cannot be determined this far ahead.

There may be a competitive process if the demand for a specific vacancy is high to ensure fair allocation.

If you choose to decline the position offered to you, it may mean that you are placed in a holding pool until you do accept a paramedic position. Until you accept a position and move onto a clinician line, you will remain in your ECA role at ECA pay.

When you accept a paramedic position, you will receive induction and preceptorship on commencement of the newly qualified paramedic role.

Paramedic positions offered on qualification will be on a relief basis.

You will be expected to adhere to the HCPC Code of Conduct of Performance and Ethics, as well as the Student Code of Conduct, from your commencement on the programme, otherwise you may face a Fitness to Practice hearing or review with the University of Cumbria which will determine your continuation on the programme.

Guidance on the HCPC Student Code of Conduct and Ethics can be found here: https://www.hcpc-uk.org/resources/guidance/guidance-on-conduct-and-ethics-for-students/

You will be giving an iPad by the University of Cumbria to support your on-the-job learning, however you will need to ensure you have access to a computer or laptop at home in order to write your assignments.

The placement blocks are 37.5 hrs a week, Monday to Friday. These are spaced out and avoid school holidays. Apprentices who are working less than 37.5 hrs a week, will accrue any additional hours from placement blocks and this fluctuation will be managed by the ROC in future relief planning in line with the normal rolling relief processes.

This will not be possible. The regular blocks of abstraction and the requirement for apprentices to work in different locations and with different colleagues will require Apprentices to show flexibility in the shifts they work. Any shift pattern will need to be heavily amended in order to make this possible and to effectively manage the contracted hours for apprentices, which is why all apprentices will be moved into relief.

You will need to attend a remote induction for the commencement of the bridging course and then you will need to be available for a 2-hourly session once per month for the remainder of bridging module with University of Cumbria.

You will be responsible for ensuring that you are available to attend one of them by working with your ROC scheduler.

If you are required to travel in excess of 60 miles or over 60 minutes for your academic days or placements, the Trust will reimburse your travel costs at the reserve rate, subject to approval via your line manager or equivalent.

For those staff who will be required to travel in excess of 60 miles or over 60 minutes, for two consecutive dates, you will be provided up to the amount of £50 towards your overnight accommodation.

No. The trust moved away from annualised hours a few years ago and is no longer something that is supported within this organisation.

In short, the difficulties lay with managing and monitoring of this system, and require speciality and quite time consuming management per individual, which will lead to issues with compliance of hours and issues with A/L allocation. Secondly, the system requires individuals to ultimately self-roster, which again is not supported by the Trust. All resource planning is finely balanced to ensure safe service delivery which ROC need oversight as this requires intricate planning through relief to manage this effectively.