In your news story, ‘NHS conflict coaching gets off to a slow start’ (Personnel Today, 29 November), you say only 85,000 staff had been trained in conflict resolution. It should be noted that this figure is up to the end of March 2005, not November 2005 as suggested in your story.
New figures released on 1 December 2005 show that by the end of March 2006, at least 252,000 frontline NHS staff are expected to have been trained. Ninety-five percent of the training plans for NHS trusts in England for 2005-06 have been received and they suggest that we are still on schedule to reach the target of 750,000 frontline NHS staff by 2008. With 18 training plans still to be received, we also expect the figure of 252,000 to rise by the end of March.
We are determined that all frontline staff will have the skills they need to spot, prevent and manage a potentially violent or abusive incident by 2008. We believe we are on the way to achieving just that.
Jim Gee
Chief executive, NHS Counter Fraud and Security Management Service
