Each region of England now has an established NHS Microsoft IT Academy which has been set up to offer training and exams for Microsoft certifications to all NHS staff within their area. The academies are based within local NHS organisations, many of which also have ‘satellite’ academies which can offer these same services.

Through the academies NHS staff can access the two main Microsoft Office sets of certifications, Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) for users of Office 2003 and Microsoft Certified Application Specialist (MCAS) for users of Office 2007.

Ben Hartley, a Senior Electronic Staff Record Systems Support & Information Assistant uses Microsoft Office Excel 2003 a great deal in his work. Ben explained how getting Microsoft certified has helped him, his colleagues and his employer.

“Having achieved the Microsoft certification I use most of what I have learnt in my work on a daily basis and can now work much quicker than I did previously. For instance I now know how to use the ‘V Lookup’ function in Excel, in the past I used to have two different spreadsheets with hundreds of rows of information that I used to cross reference.

Now, I just use V Lookups, which must save me about an hour a week. Completing the course hasn’t just helped me, it’s also helped my colleagues as well as I have been able to pass on some of these skills to them.”

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