New materials launched to help NHS staff Thursday, June 25, 2009 - 12:18

NIACE has launched a new set of materials - Improving Ward Communication - to help NHS staff improve their customer care and team-working skills on the job.

Developed at an NHS acute foundation trust, Improving Ward Communication is a set of booklets to support flexible, mentor-led learning for the whole ward team. It has the potential to improve performance immediately as staff grow in confidence and ability. No special expertise or staff release is needed to use these resources as the learning takes place during normal work activity. 

These booklets are suitable for UK and overseas staff and can be used with nurses and healthcare assistants at induction, to improve ongoing ward communication or as part of NVQ training.

Topics covered include:

• Helping patients at mealtimes
• Patient observations
• Handover
• Answering the ward phone
• Working with relatives
• Welcoming visitors
• Everyday English for bodily functions and feelings (explains everyday English expressions to overseas staff)

The launch is part of NIACE's Learning through Work project, which set out to test whether on-the-job learning can offer a way to develop the skills needed for progression in the low-skilled, low-paid workplace, where access to learning is most restricted.

In its first phase, Learning through Work reviewed local practices in over 50 NHS, local authority and private sector workplaces throughout the South East.

The results suggested that on-the-job learning could improve both individual skills and collective performance. Phase two involved trialling an on-the-job approach in eight health and social care workplaces.

NHS employees involved in the pilots, said:

"We are very busy and it is hard to release staff for training, but this way we can do it."

It is very important that, in an economic downturn, employers still invest in training

 

Sue Southwood

"Staff were particularly receptive to this approach. This will really help improve staff skills."

"These [staff] would not have been involved in learning without the Learning through Work project."

Mark Stuart, Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation & Change at Leeds University Business School, said:

"Learning through Work has demonstrated that work-based learning through on-the-job guidance, supported by materials and mentoring, has considerable potential for developing the basic skills required for work and further learning by employees in low-skilled, low-paid work.

"In addition to promoting learning, it offers support for performance management

 and improved work performance."

Sue Southwood, Programme Director at NIACE, said:

"It is very important that, in an economic downturn, employers still invest in training. This approach focuses on the skills used at work making it a good investment for employers."