Additional Information

Career planning can be difficult and the qualifying criteria for eligibility to apply for higher training programmes can become highly specific and change quite quickly, especially in specialties with rapidly rising competition ratios. Our advice would be to speak to your clinical and educational supervisors about whether the courses you are considering will ‘tick all of the boxes’ for a particular training programme you hope to apply for. Many doctors in training who rotate through the bigger London teaching hospital Trusts complete our courses and some have already taken other courses resulting in similar qualifications. Training programmes in clinical medicine differ in length and structure according to specialty. Acceptance onto training programmes in medical and surgical specialties can be very competitive, and in the UK, competition ratios are published to show the numbers of applications received against posts available  

Healthcare Skills Training International provides courses designed to give you key practical skills to support you at every stage in your career. We know the non-technical tools you need to help you achieve your career goals, and we teach them in a time-efficient and brain-friendly manner. Learn them early, and your ability to control situations which can lead to increased litigation risk, the consequences of poor communication and career burn-out if poorly handled, are greatly enhanced. Increasing confidence in your abilities when managing day-to-day practice takes the way you come across to patients, peers and supervisors to a  higher level.
There is no simple answer to this question and your local Education Training Board or Deanery faculty are in the best position to advise you.

Yes. Our Postgraduate Diploma in  Clinical Education (EduQual Level 7) maps to the RCN’s Advance practice Pillars section 2 Education (either with clinical practice or education sector). Our Postgraduate Diploma in  Clinical Leadership (EduQual Level 7) maps to the RCN’s Advance Practice Pillars section 1 Management and Leadership. Advanced practice is a level of practice in which a practitioner has demonstrated their ability to work autonomously at a high level (level 7/ Masters level) across all four pillars of advanced practice. The four pillars of advanced practice are leadership and management, education, advanced clinical practice, and research.

We offer two EduQual level 5 Qualifications: 360 Theatre Access: Professional Award in Access to Operating Theatres: National Occupational Standard, for those providing product support in operating theatres. 360 Hospital Access: Professional Award in Access to Patient-facing Clinical Areas: National Occupational Standard, for those supporting products in clinical areas (including Critical Care Areas such as Intensive Care Units, Interventional Radiology Units etc) where procedures are often carried out, but not operating theatres.

(Accredited Prior Learning/ Recognised Prior Learning/ Continuous Professional Development) 200 hours may be accredited as ‘Recognised Prior Learning’ (RPL). RPL can include the CPD required to support professional registration and any other relevant experience (including watching and shadowing/following others) or expansion of knowledge which is documented, verifiable and directly related to the candidate’s role. Candidates should be able to justify how the RPL being claimed relates to this qualification, if called upon to do so. Learning and experience related to a first degree does not qualify as RPL.

Recognition of Prior Learning

Recognition of prior learning (RPL) allows you to convert relevant level knowledge, skills, and experience into credits you can put towards a qualification.

Credits are a standard way of measuring learning.  RPL means you can start your course at the appropriate level and reduce the number of credits you need to study to gain a qualification. This is sometimes called exemption. 

For example, you could perhaps use RPL to start in the second year of a master’s or bachelor’s degree or put it towards the total credits you need to complete a course.

Whether you can use RPL depends on how well your previous knowledge, skills or experience matches the modules on your course. This is entirely in the hands of the provider of the course you wish to take. Each provider will assess your individual RPL evidence against their course requirements and decide as to how much exemption you are given. HCS does not form any part of the providers decision making panel. 

Sources of RPL

RPL can come from previous study, employment, voluntary work and training courses, including courses and qualifications you didn’t complete.

RPL is also known as prior learning assessment (PLA) or Acquired Prior Learning (APL) and prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR).

Types of RPL

There are 3 types of RPL you can put towards a qualification:

Credit transfer
Prior certificated learning
Prior experiential learning
You can put more than one of these types of RPL towards a qualification, but you as the learner must provide the proof to the provider who’s course you wish to take and have exemption for.

The Awarding Organisation sets the limits for total learning time of a qualification. This may be based on Ofqual (one of the UKs national regulators) guidance as stated at Regulatory Condition E2. Here the total qualification guide times are given as: Award (120 Hours or less; Certificate (between 121-369 hours; Diploma (370 or more hours). Where a Diploma is stated to have a total Learning Time of 600 hours for example, then the credits awarded will be 60. The credit value of a qualification is thus the learning time divided by 10. Each multiple of 10 learning hours equates to one credit. All credits are identified on the certificate issued by our awarding organisation EduQual. Healthcare Skills Training International is the training arm of HC Skills International. Healthcare Skills Training International is an EduQual approved training centre.

If you wish to use a Healthcare Skills Training International qualification to obtain a Masters Degree from a university, you are required to present the university with a qualification transcript (See below), the university reviews the qualification transcript and subsequently award what they feel is the correct number of credit exemptions. Each University is an institution in their own right and will award credits on individual basis at their discretion. Historically the majority of universities have allowed exemption for the whole of the credit value however it must be emphasised that this is discretionary – in other words, in any particular university, one student may be allowed all the credit value while another student may not. This is an arbitrary process, each student is assessed individually, and our organisation does not have any input to the universities exemption panels.

Regarding a qualification transcript, this would be something that you would request from EduQual as the Awarding Organisation that issued the certificate. These documents are sometimes referred to as Notification of Performance (NOP) or in Scotland Record of Attainment (ROP). These documents should list all the modules or subjects you studied in each year, the marks or grades you achieved for each module and the UK credit value and level of each module. It should be stamped or signed by the registry of the Awarding Organisation. Comparing qualification levels between countries and regions can be confusing. See flipbook below to compare the credits and qualifications for different countries and regions.

Deadlines for submissions are in the ‘Examination Brief’ which is given at the end of our  courses and they vary.  Information on assessment deadlines for specific courses can be provided on request. Irrespective of deadlines given, we are always open to extending these for exceptional circumstances. It is also worth noting that the two virtual training days on a Diploma course are consecutive. However, if you can only attend day one and wish to attend the second day on another course, we will, with advanced notice, strive to accommodate this. Get in touch with the Healthcare Skills Training International Office if you need to discuss this option.

While Healthcare Skills Training International is a Corporate Partner of AoME, and AoME members teach on our courses, our courses are not AoME accredited.