New online video training for care home staff

Wessex AHSN and West of England AHSN have collaborated with West Hampshire CCG (RESTORE2) and Health Education England to produce a series of free videos and e-learning materials to support staff working in care homes to care for residents who are at risk of deterioration.

As recognised in a recent paper supported by the Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria, identifying acute illness, including sepsis, amongst older adults in care homes can be difficult, and opportunities to initiate appropriate care may be missed, if illness is not recognised promptly.

A series of short videos (around 3 minutes each) describe how to take measurements from residents correctly (such as blood pressure and oxygen saturation), spots the soft signs of deterioration, and prevent the spread of infection.

Natasha Swinscoe, national lead for patient safety for the AHSN Network says “I am excited to see the launch of these videos, which will support care home staff to be trained in a consistent way to recognise and respond to the soft signs of deterioration”.

You can access the videos via Health Education England’s e-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH) Hub, an educational web-based platform that provides quality assured online training content for the UK’s health and care workforce here.

You can also view the full suite of videos on the designated YouTube channel.

This is one of a range of tools which AHSNs are supporting to provide training materials to up skill people who work in care homes. This follows the AHSN network report, which highlighted over 30 examples of projects delivered by England’s 15 Patient Safety Collaboratives (PSCs) and the AHSNs which host them, published in September 2019.

Guidance for care home staff to register for an account

To register for e-Learning for Healthcare visit this link.

Select the ‘Register’ button. Select the option ‘I am a care home or hospice worker’ then enter your care home / hospice name or postcode and select it from the options available in the drop-down list. Finally enter your care home / hospice registration code and select ‘Register’. You may need to see your employer to get this code.

If your employer does not have a code, then they need to contact the e-LfH Support Team. The Support Team can either give the employer the registration code or arrange a bulk upload of all staff.

Detailed instructions on how to gain access are available here.

Quick start guide to e-LfH hub is also available here.