New Advice and Guidance train the trainer sessions

NHS England is updating the Advice and Guidance (A&G) in the NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS) to support the outcomes outlined in ‘Reforming Elective Care for Patients’ in relation to ‘Care in the right place’ and supporting the policy direction of elective care referrals being managed through Single Points of Access (SPOA).

The new A&G will allow the NHS to:

• standardise how A&G is accessed and delivered
• support elective recovery by reducing unnecessary referrals
• improve clinical collaboration between primary and secondary care
• provide a scalable, nationally supported solution rather than multiple local workarounds
• enable third-party systems to integrate with the NHS e-RS
• respond to feedback from users about current usability and workflow issues
• establish A&G as the clinical front door to elective care

The new A&G improves visibility of queries, responses and request status, enabling clinicians to prioritise effectively and make safer, more informed decisions. 

Find out more from the New Advice and Guidance page which sets out the reasons for the change and what the future of a new A&G will look like.

The sessions will support delegates to develop the capability to deliver effective local end-user training that embeds the new A&G workflows consistently across their organisation.

They are aimed for e-RS leads, training leads and any other relevant staff involved in supporting teams involved in managing A&G within e-RS.

Each session lasts around one hour and includes demonstrations, overview of support material available and time for questions. Any questions not answered during the session will be answered and collated alongside questions raised at other training sessions and published on the e-RS Futures - New Advice & Guidance page.

As part of session registration, we will be asking delegates to agree to share relevant materials with end users across their organisation and work with colleagues to ensure organisational readiness and training is completed by 30 June 2026 at the very latest.

Immediately following session attendance, delegates will receive an email with links to download all training materials. The email will also ask delegates to provide NHS England with a high-level training & change readiness plan and agree to submit regular progress updates in the weeks leading up to 30 June 2026, to support assurance that organisations have completed their local readiness and training activities ahead of the deadline. Further details regarding regular progress reporting will be included in the post-session email.

Prior to attending a training webinar, recommendations for preparing for the changes include:

1. Identify and nominate local training/operational leads to plan for and deliver local training and change readiness.
2. Book onto the Train the Trainer session and schedule local training for clinical and admin teams after attendance.
3. Plan your organisations’ training now- factoring in the number of users and readiness for the new A&G by the end of June.
4. Review & update current operational processes- so processes for new A&G are agreed and signed off by the end of June.

Please contact [email protected] if you are unable to access e-RS Futures or need to discuss the introduction of the new A&G or any aspect of the A&G training with the team.