Welcome to Cumbria Health Ltd. (CHL) Learning and Development page

Cumbria Health is committed to ensuring that every one of us is valued, respected, listened to and supported to reach our full potential. CHL will provide the right conditions for your ongoing development to ensure you are provided with the right support and guidance throughout your career with Cumbria Health.

CHL promotes achievement through appraisal, effectiveness in probation, building capability into a role, maintaining competence in existing responsibilities. As well as supporting professional revalidation, and growing talent in readiness for transition.

My name is Mark and I'm our Workforce Development Lead and part of Cumbria Health Learning and Development (LD) team. Like others in our LD team, I have qualifications and experience in education and training to support effectively and with quality, our staff development.

As part of the LD team, we offer education and training from entry level to master's level qualifications including continued professional development. We also work for and with a number of UK University's as Lecturers to support medical and nursing, postgraduate and graduate programmes. Our delivery team are all registered and practicing nurses and doctors.

In my view, Cumbria Health provides gold standard education and training by subject experts, which is a real time benefit for staff. 

If you are an employee and want to know what is on offer for you right now, please look to our intranet LD page or for personal development advice, please contact the Workforce team.

If you are a not an employee and interested in our LD offer, please contact our Workforce team for more information.

As a Social Enterprise organisation, we promote continued professional development (CPD) throughout our workforce and offer opportunities for staff to undertake training and development, with both internal and external training providers. 

I feel at home on the fells of Alston with the Helm wind blowing. I feel happy running along the rugged coastline of West Cumbria with my spaniel Boris. I feel working at Cumbria Health has given me the opportunity to be wholly involved and present with my family. It has given me the flexibility to watch my children grow, attend first days, parents evening and sports days….   

I am a General Practitioner working at Cumbria Health.  I first started working as a GP Registrar at ‘CHoC’ in 2014. Working out of the then Workington Base, I navigated my way through what seemed the endless ethical dilemmas and challenging cases into the early hours of the morning. Facing the cows of Skinburness, the grey harbour of Maryport and the winding journey to Millom. Over time I developed a real liking for urgent care work, I was contended by the variety of cases and the need to make urgent and sensible decisions.  

The warmth of the Cumbrian people; each person with their own aspiration, comfort and dream- I love it. I have a real appreciation for the bond we develop with our drivers, the control staff, our colleagues; the team, the family in which we exist.  

Fast forward 10 years I am still with Cumbria Health. However, it seems I now wear many ‘hats’: educational, governance, and obviously clinical. I work as a clinical auditor for the Cumbria Health clinical workforce monthly audits. I sit upon the CH Clinical Governance and Policy Review Group, and the Northern Academic GP Teacher Advisory Group. In addition to this, I also sit as Chair for the ICB Health and Wellbeing workforce strand and lecture medical students at University of Central Lancaster. I find this variety of work keeps me enthused and current.  

Throughout my training and carer, I have been extremely fortunate to learn from, and receive support from so many outstanding professionals.  A personal priority for me is to give pass on this knowledge to others, to ensure excellence in patient safety and care, and workforce wellbeing.  

Mentoring trainee ACPs and GP DiT (Doctors in training) whilst at Cumbria Health for some years, I have now taken up a leadership role in this field. I was fortunate to undertake the GP Trainer Course last year which has enabled and supported this position. Alongside Tim Sanders, I have had an exciting role in developing the first and only GP DiT primary placement solely in the Out of Hours setting. Initially a pilot, this is now considered a substantiative post by The Deanery. As part of my educational role at CH, I am involved in the organisation and delivery of clinical educational for the Nurse and General Practitioner away days which I really enjoy. A new project I have recently developed and implemented is a workforce Balint Group….come along, give it a try!