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Enhancing Generalist Skills – Yorkshire and the Humber (enhance)
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What is Generalism?
Generalism is about both broadening the depth of your clinical skills and developing the understanding of whole person-centred care. It is about understand the healthcare needs and priorities of the populations you serve in the wider healthcare system and ensuring sustainable healthcare.
The programme is responding to the needs of the future, with population needs becoming more complexed and people living longer.
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Our Approach.
Our approach is multi-professional and geographically focused.
The Yorkshire and Humber Generalist School (part of the national enhance programme) invites learners from the local health and social care system in Yorkshire and the Humber to join a 1-year programme that has been designed to comply with local needs.
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Person centred practice
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Environmental sustainability
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System working
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Population health
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Complex multi-morbidities
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Social justice and health equity
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Two-tier learning opportunities.
Depending upon your time and interest, there are two tiers of learning available:
Enhance enable (Tier 1) is an online, self-directed programme. Modules can be done in any order and are completely flexible. Each module takes approximately 4 – 6 hours to complete. Supporting enrichment activities are under development across the region.
Enhance explore (Tier 2) is a multi-professional immersive professional development programme which takes one year (approximately 2 – 4 hours per week, flexibly) and includes a quality improvement project. You can do Enhance explore without doing Enhance enable.
Feedback from students who have completed the course:
“I want to pinch myself – I can’t believe I am being given the time and space to think about this”
“My head is buzzing with new ideas”
“The module has resonated with me so much… I am going to continue this work throughout this course and indeed my career”
“The multi-professional learning environment is the most useful part of the course”
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The Enhance programme
Delivery of this programme is led by a local Head of School, Miss Helen Cattermole. It is supported by our Postgraduate Dean, Dr Jon Cooper and by the Integrated Care Boards across the region.
The programme follows recommendations from the Future Doctor report but is not just for doctors (nor even solely for clinical staff). It underpins the three strategic shifts within the NHS Ten Year plan. The national syllabus and learning resources are hosted on the enhance generalist skills website.
The Yorkshire and Humber Generalist School has completed eight enhance explore cohorts in Humber and North Yorkshire, Sheffield has completed its first cohort and is now undertaking its second. Four cohorts are underway in Humber, York, Bradford and Sheffield; more than 200 colleagues, from all professional backgrounds (clinical and non-clinical, from primary and secondary care, social care, VSCE and wider Integrated Care Systems) have completed or undertaken the programme. Feedback is excellent, and the programme has been independently and positively evaluated.
We are now taking applications for the next Humber and North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire Enhance explore cohorts starting in 2026 -2027.
enhance regional trailblazers - The Humber Generalist School
Please browse our resources, FAQs and links to find out more about the Enhancing Generalist Skills (enhance) Programme in Yorkshire and the Humber. If you have questions or want to find out more about the programme and how you can take part, please email us on hyp-tr.enhance.yorkshire@nhs.net.
You may find the following videos useful:
Enhancing Generalist Skills, Who, What, Why, When and How?
Further information can be found on the national enhance website.
Cohort 10 (Humber region) dates*:
10th September 2026
15th September 2026 OR 1st October 2026
22nd October 2026
24th November 2026
2nd December 2026
26th January 2027
17th March 2027
19th March 2027
19th May 2027
17th June 2027
30th June 2027
15th July 2027
*please be aware occasionally dates may be subject to change, due to unavoidable circumstances. Candidates will be made aware of changes as soon as possible.
FAQs
It is an educational programme open to all health and care staff working across the Humber and Norht Yorkshire region. Participants can be registered or unregistered health and care professionals, VSCE staff or colleagues working across the wider health system who will learn together in a cohort over a twelve month period. The programme focuses on enhancing generalist skills – the areas of practice which span all specialties and professions such as providing person-centred care, working sustainably in complex systems, reducing health inequalities and managing patients with multiple interacting comorbidities. It is a professional development programme, and as such, managers who support services to become more integrated, patient focused, sustainable and efficient will also find they can learn and contribute, and bring this learning back to their workplaces.
This is a trailblazer site as part of a national programme to enhance generalist skills.
The programme is offered on a geographical basis to allow local networks to be formed, and to allow training to focus on the local population needs.
There is an enhance programme covering South Yorkshire which started in June 2025. This is run by the South Yorkshire ICS with funding from NHS England. The programme has been developed in close collaboration with the existing programme working across Humber and North Yorkshire to ensure that delivery is complementary whilst being tailored to local health and care needs. Further information can be found on the South Yorkshire Enhance programme website.
South Yorkshire Cohort 3 Poster - Start Date 1 October 2026
In West Yorkshire our first cohort is piloting in Bradford and will run until November 2026. Applications for cohort 1 are now closed. There are plans to launch a second West Yorkshire wide cohort next year, however nothing is confirmed.
If you would like to be considered for future West Yorkshire cohorts, please send an expression of interest to wy.traininghub@nhs.net
For enhance enable, the time commitment is about 4-6 hours per module. This is all independent, self-directed learning with suggested workplace activities, but additional enrichment activities are under development across the region. This learning is flexible, and modules can be done in any order.
For enhance explore, most people will need to commit about 4 hours a week to cover the programme, although this learning can be taken as deeply or as broadly as you wish. Some programmes are divided into six eight-week blocks, others are split into seven modules, each lasting seven weeks.
In this latter case, six modules are core and the seventh is an applied module. There are fixed points at the beginning and end of each module to allow the cohort to learn together, with flexible, guided self-learning in between.
The programme is free to participants; it is funded from the public purse by NHS England.
Definitely. There is no level of prior academic learning required to participate. Most of the learning is self-directed so you can tailor your learning to your own interests and styles. There are options for learning via practical skills, projects, visits and shadowing, as well as more traditional learning such as lectures, workshops, reading, e-learning, videos and podcasts. There is no formal assessment but participants will be expected to reflect on their learning throughout the course.
In the explore course we are looking for enthusiasm and engagement, with a willingness to think differently, rather than any particular academic achievement.
For enhance enable participants there is a certificate for each module, and the opportunity to gain a certificate of contextual leadership after completion of all six core modules plus a leadership component.
For enhance explore participants will be issued with attendance certificates detailing their continuing professional development (CPD) hours. Some programmes also have continuing professional accreditation (CPD points) from the Royal College of Physicians for each of the delivered elements of the course. Additionally, for those who choose to do this, there is an opportunity to undertake a Postgraduate Certificate in Clinical Practice, Leadership and Management (CPME). This will involve additional time and money. The current cost of the PG Cert is £3300 but we are unable to fund this. Other sources of funding may be available to help with the costs (for example, Trust CPD funds).
The national enhance website gives more details about the pilot programme, and links to the excellent programme handbook which describes the programme and its learning in more detail.
The Head of School is Miss Helen Cattermole, based in Hull Teaching Hospitals (helen.cattermole3@nhs.net) and the Training Programme Director is Dr Mohamed Malik, based in Scunthorpe Hospital (mohamed.malik@nhs.net). Our Programme Support Manager is Julie Thomson (hyp-tr.enhance.yorkshire@nhs.net) and we can all be contacted for further details.
There is a specific deanery web page for Foundation doctors with all the information you need here.