Introduction

All NHS employing organisations have the same overarching legal, regulatory and national policy framework when employing staff. Workplace continuing professional development is vital for ensuring that NHS staff remain competent in their role and in this article, we are looking at the Core Skills Training Framework (CSTF) and e-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH) to see how they can assist. This article is particularly suitable to NHS organisations who aren’t yet aligned to the CSTF or those who would like to learn more about the content e-LfH provides.

Core Skills Training Framework (CSTF)

First introduced in 2013 by Skills for Health, the Core Skills Training Framework (CSTF) sets the benchmark for healthcare providers, ensuring that all members of staff are appropriately trained in key areas and sets the frequency in which learning is refreshed. As of January 2026, the NHS in England currently employ over 1.5 million people[1] who each play a role in ensuring that patients receive high standards of care within the organisation they work for, and continuing professional development is essential to this.

Although alignment to the CSTF is voluntary, many organisations within the NHS in England have adopted the framework to a lesser or greater degree, with the following 11 core skills and mandatory subjects outlined by the CSTF[2]:

  • Equality, Diversity and Human Rights
  • Health, Safety & Welfare
  • Conflict Resolution
  • Fire Safety
  • Infection Prevention & Control
  • Moving & Handling
  • Safeguarding Adults
  • Preventing Radicalisation
  • Safeguarding Children
  • Resuscitation
  • Information Governance

Since its introduction, a challenge faced by the CSTF is how it ensures that the quality of the learning carried out by staff is consistent and of a high standard regardless of the healthcare organisation they work for, and that is what e-Learning for Healthcare aims to resolve.

e-Learning for Healthcare

e-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH) is a programme ran by NHS England to provide education and training to healthcare professionals. Enabled by the comprehensive prospectus e-LfH provides, NHS organisations in England can easily enlist their staff to carry out the core skills and mandatory training required by the CSTF in a consistent and always-relevant manner.

For organisations interested in the content that e-LfH provides, there are two ways in which to enrol your staff: either by direct user registration or Learning Management System (LMS) integration via the AICC standard.

e-Learning for Healthcare – Direct user registration

If your organisation does not currently use an LMS or it is incompatible with the AICC standard, e-LfH allow individuals to register and carry out the training directly via their website found here. Once registered, your staff can easily search for and launch resources offered in the prospectus, with completion history and competency reporting all accessed within the e-LfH portal.

The charity ‘Skills for Care’ has written a comprehensive guide on how to register and use the resources provided by e-LfH and can be found here.

Direct user registration provides a quick and easy way for members of your organisation to carry out the core skills and mandatory learning outlined by the CSTF. An additional benefit to direct user registration is the ability for e-LfH to record completions directly into ESR which may be favourable for doctors in training who visit multiple NHS Trusts as part of their rotation.

However, if your organisation does not use ESR to track core skills training competencies and uses a dedicated LMS instead, then for a more integrated solution without the need for separate user registration it is recommended that you connect your LMS to e-LfH via the AICC standard.

e-Learning for Healthcare – LMS integration via AICC

Although the direct user registration method allows for easy access to the e-LfH resources, it does have some drawbacks:

  1. Your staff members need to create and manage a separate user login specifically for the e-LfH website which they may find difficult to remember.
  2. Reporting on staff compliancy at an organisational level is carried out by downloading a PDF or CSV file from the e-LfH portal which would then need to be processed separately by a relevant person or system – this can prove to be inefficient. Alternatively, if using ESR to track competencies, a feed would need to be enabled into your data warehouse and processed separately into your organisation’s reporting software.

Fortunately, e-LfH provides another method of accessing their resources by allowing LMS integration using the AICC standard at version 4.1. Integrating your LMS with e-LfH has many advantages:

  1. User management is handled by your LMS, negating the need for another set of user credentials.
  2. Staff competencies for core skills courses are recorded directly in your LMS alongside all other training, providing a consolidated view of staff current and past completions. Once a member of staff completes a course in e-LfH, your LMS is automatically notified.
  3. You can utilise the same feed of competency information from your LMS into your organisation’s reporting software of choice.

To get started with e-LfH’s AICC integration, a key member of your organisation (e.g. Head of Learning & Organisational Development) first needs to complete the 'Terms of Use for AICC Access to eLearning Content' declaration form. This form acts as a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and sets out the obligations required for accessing content on e-LfH’s server. Once completed, you will need to provide e-LfH with the URL and IP address that AICC communication will take place over between your LMS and e-LfH’s server - this is so they can add your URL to their whitelist and enable communication[3].

Depending on the LMS that your organisation uses, the AICC course setup will differ so it is recommended that you consult the user guide or support team for your respective LMS if you need assistance with this.

When configuring the course setup in your chosen LMS, you will need to provide the URL in which users will be redirected to when they launch the course. You can find this in the e-LfH prospectus which is offered as a downloadable spreadsheet found here. On this webpage, you can select the programmes your organisation is interested in (recommended to select all) and click the 'Download as CSV (for Excel)' button at the bottom of the page. After opening the CSV file, the column named 'AiccUrl' is what you need to provide your LMS with.

The final step to integrating with e-LfH via AICC is to launch the course content from your LMS. If the course setup was done correctly then the user should be redirected to the e-Learning content for them to complete. Upon completion, e-LfH will notify your LMS and the competency should be automatically recorded.

IThirtyFour has many years of experience working with education-based software and particularly with NHS organisations. We understand the challenges faced by NHS organisations to ensure that staff training is accurate and of high uptake for national reporting; having to respond to requests from CQC regarding staff competencies with tight deadlines, and providing staff with a suitable software solution to undertake their training. If you require any assistance with workplace learning at your organisation, please get in touch with us via our Contact Form and we’ll be happy to help.

References

  1. NHS England (January 2026). Workforce statistics. https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-workforce-statistics/january-2026
  2. Skills for Health (2021). Core Skills Training Framework (England) Subject Guide. https://www.skillsforhealth.org.uk/app/uploads/2021/07/CSTF-Eng-Subject-Guide-v1.1.pdf
  3. e-Learning for Healthcare (2022). AICC remote launching of elfh content. https://portal.e-lfh.org.uk/Content/docs/AICC%20remote%20launching%20v2.1.pdf