It seems like an awfully long time since we travelled the length and breadth of England, providing training to ‘NIPT champions’. The training we delivered to more than 400 health care professionals was about the offer of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) being added to the existing screening pathway for Down’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome and Patau’s syndrome.
More recently we blogged to say that the new NIPT laboratory procurement process is now underway and included details about the proposed timeline.
Following on from this, we are really pleased to announce that we’ve launched a brand new NIPT e-learning unit on Health Education England’s e-Learning for Healthcare platform. We’ve also created a 50 second short video as a little taster of the resource.
We suggest that NIPT champions start to put plans together to make sure that colleagues who offer screening for Down’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome and Patau’s syndrome are signposted to the new e-learning in preparation for the addition of NIPT to this screening pathway.
This new resource replaces the NHS Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme (FASP) NIPT cascade training package, which has now been retired. NIPT champions do not need to arrange and deliver NIPT training sessions like they used to, because the training is now online and self-directed.
New NIPT e-learning unit
The new NIPT e-learning unit includes:
- a short summary and update version
- a full version
Short summary and update
Healthcare professionals who have already done the old NIPT cascade training only need to complete the short summary and update version of the new e-learning.
As well as signposting the user to additional resources, the shorter version includes recommendations from the rapid review by the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) in 2019, which concluded that:
- NIPT can be offered in twin pregnancies
- an additional method of doing NIPT called DNA microarray can be added to the evaluative roll-out
The short summary and update unit should take less than 30 minutes to complete.
Full version
Healthcare professionals who offer screening for Down’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome and Patau’s syndrome, but who have not completed the old NIPT cascade training, need to complete the full version of the new e-learning. This should take less than an hour.
The full version contains:
- the essential elements included in the NIPT cascade training
- recommendations from the 2019 UK NSC rapid review
- signposting to additional resources
We encourage anyone who completed the NIPT cascade training a while ago, but feels they would like to refresh their knowledge, to complete the full version.
Virtual NIPT workshops
We’ll be running some 'virtual' practical workshops for NIPT champions early in 2021. Keep an eye on the blog for more information, including dates and times, and how you can sign up.
PHE Screening blog
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