Royal College of Nursing accredits three new training programmes from Roche

Roche Diagnostics in the UK and Ireland has launched cobas® academy, a brand new, innovative training and competence support platform, which is designed to improve and test the knowledge of hospital nurses when undertaking bedside (point of care) testing.

The flexible e-learning and re-certification platform will help coordinators and administrators in hospitals to more easily manage their training and re-certification programmes for healthcare professionals throughout the country. Combined with face to face support, it provides an efficient way to train ward staff and drive quality patient care.

The new e-learning platform comes at a time when testing at the patient bedside is becoming increasingly more regulated with competence assessment and regular training of hospital staff now set as mandatory 1. In the UK, the NHS has developed a Knowledge and Skills framework 2 linking training of NHS staff working in healthcare science areas to national standards and defined competency outcomes. In practical terms this means, for example, that nurses will need to achieve and maintain high skill levels when performing tests on patients.

Further more, the NHS has been tasked to identify £15-20 billion of efficiency savings by 2014. The 'QIPP challenge' made by NHS Chief Executive David Nicholson, March 2010, supports the vision of the Darzi Next Stage Review and demands action at local, regional, and national level. Solutions to drive up quality while meeting the financial demands of the next few years will assist the NHS to make the best use of scarce resources.

About cobas® academy
cobas academy's primary function is to test and refresh the nurses' knowledge of point of care testing systems and procedures to obtain a reliable result. The e-learning is undertaken post face-to-face training, is accessible via the hospital intranet and is accredited by the Royal College of Nursing, May 2010, demonstrating that the content is of national standard quality.

The RCN Accreditation Unit has confirmed that these courses have met its quality standards.

cobas academy offers the user an optional pre-test that generates a study plan to focus only on required areas. On passing the exam, nurses obtain a personalized certificate, providing evidence of Continuous Professional Development.

cobas® academy offers benefits such as greater flexibility in training delivery and the opportunity to involve a larger group of staff. The ease of access allows healthcare professionals to do their study in their own time and at their own pace. The course content has been developed to optimise information retention, catering for the different learning styles. Additionally, the content can be tailored to reflect particular requirements of the hospital, for example to ensure clear communication and test comprehension of specific local operating procedures.

cobas academy is a module of the cobas® IT 1000 application, allowing a single user database and logon for all advanced Roche systems. User passwords can be self managed. These unique features help networked healthcare providers improve their record keeping, allowing the creation of an audit trail of operator training which will assist with measuring and demonstrating both compliance and efficiency. The automated system saves management time in addition to providing valuable reports which can in turn drive cost savings with the NHS litigation authority.

Courses are available across blood gas testing, blood glucose testing and urinalysis initially, with plans for further releases in the future.

The content of the cobas® academy courses deliver to the competences outlined in the Knowledge and Skills framework. This, coupled with the unique exam generated for each operator (a variable selection from a robust bank of c. 100 unique exam questions per course) means that managers can be confident that staff are meeting set standards.

Developed in an authentic environment
Developed in an authentic environment cobas academy was initially developed and tested in the UK and the Netherlands. It was designed with the customer and for the customer to allow hospitals to include information about local site policies and other information to ensure competence covers far more than instructions on how to use Roche products. It allows hospitals to apply Roche products to the appropriate local patient care pathways and ensure that users are consistently trained and assessed on this additional information.

cobas academy has been developed and piloted at Belfast City Hospital in the UK. There are more than 2,000 staff at the hospital that run 40 Accu-Chek Inform blood glucose systems as well as cobas b 221 blood gas analyzers, CoaguChek XS Plus and Roche Cardiac Readers.

Jeremy Neely, Point of Care Coordinator, Belfast City Hospital, Belfast, UK said, "Our nurses already have over 20 compulsory courses to attend, many with mandatory annual updates. This presents the hospital with difficulties with allocating time for nurse training and ensuring attendance. User competence is a key concern with point of care testing as it has a direct impact on the quality of patient care. cobas academy allows nurses greater flexibility in completing mandatory training in point of care testing as well as improving their IT skills. It helps the laboratory by reducing the time spent on annual re-certification training, and allows the latter to be delivered to larger groups of staff. cobas academy combined with cobas IT 1000 will be rolled out across all hospitals in Northern Ireland reaching more than 25,000 staff."

Ian Parfrement, Director Hospital Invitro Diagnostics said, "We hope that cobas academy will make a substantial difference in the drive towards further efficiencies in point of care training for UK nurses and to that end we are particularly delighted with the positive feedback on the tool received from the Royal College of Nursing."

1. In 2006, ISO 22870 was published containing set of standards for POC testing, including sections dealing with training, certification and re-certification of POC testing systems operators.

2. Knowledge and Skills framework introduced October 2004, revised 2008

3 Modernising Scientific Careers: The England Action Plan, Department of health, March 2010

3 QIPP - NHS Chief Executive David Nicholson made this approach central to achieving the vision, of the Darzi Next Stage Review, issuing a 'QIPP challenge' to chief executives throughout, the NHS last year (2009). The main emphasis of the policy is the productivity initiative - aligning QIPP with the financial challenges expected to be facing the NHS from 2011/12 onwards. Frontline NHS investment will grow in line with general inflation in 2011/12 and 2012/13. However the demand for healthcare from a growing and aging population, new technology and ever higher patient expectations mean there is increasing pressure on the NHS budget. The NHS needs to identify £15-20 billion of efficiency savings by the end of 2013/14.

About Roche

Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is a leader in research-focused healthcare with combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche is the world's largest biotech company with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, virology, inflammation, metabolism and CNS. Roche is also the world leader in in-vitro diagnostics, tissue-based cancer diagnostics and a pioneer in diabetes management. Roche's personalised healthcare strategy aims at providing medicines and diagnostic tools that enable tangible improvements in the health, quality of life and survival of patients. In 2009, Roche had over 80,000 employees worldwide and invested almost 10 billion Swiss francs in R&D. The Group posted sales of 49.1 billion Swiss francs. Genentech, United States, is a wholly owned member of the Roche Group. Roche has a majority stake in Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan. For more information: www.roche.com.

All trademarks used or mentioned in this release are legally protected by law.