An online course designed to reduce the time it takes to train new scrub practitioners is now freely available to newly qualified NHS nurses and operating department practitioners (ODPs) across England. 

Developed by the University College London Hospitals (UCLH) Healthcare Academy, part of the UCLH NHS Foundation Trust, the course is being shared nationally via the GIRFT programme, with the aim of improving theatre productivity and in turn reducing waiting lists and times for surgery. 

The 14-week course is all online and combines theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience in a scrub setting. Nurses and ODPs working in the NHS can sign up and start at any time and can complete the course at their own pace. 

Pilot work at UCLH showed that enrolling new scrub practitioners on the course to learn the fundamentals of the role reduced their time to competency by almost two months, from an average of 6.1 months to 4.2 months, ensuring that any drop in productivity typically seen as a result of onboarding new team members was minimised. The satisfaction score among learners was 4.8 out of 5. 

The course adheres fully to the training guidelines of the Perioperative Care Collaborative (PCC), College of Operating Department Practitioners (CODP), the Association for Perioperative Practice (AfPP) and the European Operating Room Nurses Association (EORNA), and constitutes 45 Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Continuing Professional Development (CPD) hours 

Anyone interested in signing up should speak to their theatre manager, who will have full details, or can email england.girfttheatresandperiop@nhs.net. 

The course is being offered as part of GIRFT’s work to drive improvements in theatre productivity, supporting providers and systems to maximise the effectiveness and throughput of their surgical theatres through improvements across the surgical elective pathway.