HFMA Academy: qualification successes during a challenging year
A total of 55 diplomas, certificates and awards will be ‘handed’ out at the ceremony, held as part of the student day on Friday 4 December in this year’s HFMA annual conference, running online over the first two weeks of the month.
To date, 578 students have embarked on qualifications with the HFMA Academy. And nearly 20 people have gone on to start a final year of study, which leads to an MBA in Healthcare Finance, delivered by BPP University.
It is fantastic to see so many people doing well. These are demanding qualifications with an 85% pass rate and the feedback from students is consistently high. ‘I love, it, love it, love it’ was the response from one student on our primary care management diploma, claiming they could already see their improved personal effectiveness.
A student on our masters-level healthcare business and finance diploma rated the content of the costing module as ‘excellent’ and ‘engaging’. Students often praise tutors, many of them former finance directors – ‘fantastic’, ‘brilliant’, ‘incredibly knowledgeable’, ‘interested in their field’, ‘the highlight’, and ‘approachable’ have been among the comments.
Among those 55 awards will be 30 Advanced Diplomas in Healthcare Business and Finance – 16 at the higher level, enabling the graduates to move on to the final year of the MBA, if they choose. We are also handing out five advanced certificates, gained by taking a single module from the advanced diploma curriculum, and seven intermediate awards for completing a module from our level 4 diploma.
The HFMA has been involved with the Diploma in Advanced Primary Care Management since it was piloted in 2016, but we have now taken on full responsibility for managing and assessing the programme. And 13 diplomas represent our first awards since assuming this wider role. With a further 23 students having just embarked on the programme, the qualification continues to attract those with a role in primary care, including many practice managers.
It has been a tough year for everybody, the NHS and care sectors particularly. But our students have faced challenges of their own. Homeworking, redeployment to other roles and working in a rapidly introduced temporary financial framework have all created pressures.
A number of students have commented about how these have all added to the stress of studying, with some understandably deciding to defer assessment. The qualifications can place big demands on students. But we think they are worth the effort. From their feedback, our successful graduates seem to agree.
We look forward to celebrating with them at the conference – albeit virtually this year.
Visit www.hfma.org.uk/qualifications/
Alison Myles is HFMA director of education
Bitesize milestone
More than 11,500 free HFMA bitesize courses have been accessed since their launch in April 2020, enabling learners to clock up 79,103 hours of continuing professional development.
It is just a year since the full bitesize portfolio was launched, with the free content made available to the NHS at the start of this financial year. Bitesize courses come in three formats – short (three hours), intermediate (six hours) and advanced (10 hours) online options.
There are 95 courses covering a wide range of topics, including an introduction to NHS finance, how providers are paid, business cases, budgeting and capital, as well personal development issues such as managing conflict and managing teams.
Five new courses, on management skills, launch on 4 December. So a total of 28 courses are now freely available to anyone working in the NHS – delivered via the Electronic Staff Record or an organisation’s own learning management system.
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