A survey of education and training for clinical governance leads and Caldicott Guardians in primary care in Trent Region

Objectives: To survey all clinical governance leads and Caldicott Guardians for PCGs and PCTs in the Trent NHS Region about their participation in a workshop programme offered by NHSE Trent and a virtual conference offered by the WISDOM Centre; to explore barriers to participation, benefits of these initiatives and aspirations for future training and education for these roles. Method: Postal questionnaire. Results: Those who attended the workshops scored them highly. Requests for future sessions include clinical governance in PCTs and increasing public involvement. There was low use of the email group and the Internet resources. The main barriers to fuller participation in the programme were time and, for the discussion group, access to email and confidence about using it. Conclusion: In an area the size of Trent it is difficult for leads on Caldicott and clinical governance to attend a single regional workshop. More training and encouragement is needed to develop a learning network through technologies such as email and dedicated websites: simply providing and advertising such networks does not lead to participation.