Interactive training proves a big success
Article Type: Notes and news From: Industrial and Commercial Training, Volume 44, Issue 4
International law firm Pinsent Masons and NHS Derbyshire County’s assistant director for equality, inclusion and human rights Anita Thomas worked in partnership to develop, deliver and evaluate engaging training for staff at NHS Derbyshire County and Derbyshire Community Health Services, inspiring improvements in how the trust meets the needs of disabled patients and staff.
NHS Derbyshire County secures health-care services for 747,000 people in hospitals, clinics and health centres, and strives to ensure equality of access to these services. As part of this commitment, and in response to consultation and data-review findings, the trust identified a need to improve the health-care experience and outcomes of patients with a learning disability, mental-health condition or other disability as well as enhance the working lives of disabled staff.
Following competitive tendering, it engaged Pinsent Masons to work in partnership to deliver training that would directly shape and influence managers’understanding of the practical actions required to promote disability equality. The firm’s national team of lawyer-trainers focuses on the design and delivery of bespoke employment-law-related training. This enabled bespoke training to be developed with the trust’s leaders so that its content could be aligned to the needs of the organization and the communities it serves.
Consequently, the training emphasised the need to create a culture where managers and their teams anticipate where issues might arise for disabled patients and/or staff. This approach to minimizing and/or removing barriers for disabled people is also key to enabling the trust to meet its legal duty to promote disability equality in the provision of services and the employment of staff.
The training won a regional prize in the UK National Training Awards.
To date, more than 300 leaders have undertaken the disability-equality training, including board members. Leaders are best placed to implement and influence change in systems and behaviors that present difficulty to patients and staff with disabilities.
The tailored training material that Pinsent Masons and Anita Thomas developed was designed to be engaging and thought-provoking. Participants used interactive voting software, a yes/no exercise to explore what could be a disability, a card-sort exercise in an NHS context to discuss disability-related terminology and case studies to develop understanding of disability equality in practice.
The key learning happens through these interactive exercises and progress is assessed at the end of the course. Anyone scoring below 70 percent on the post-course evaluation receives individual follow-up. Each course lasts four hours and is delivered to around 20 participants. Pinsent Masons’ trainers combine legal expertise and training skills, which results in the law being discussed and analyzed in practical service and work-based situations, which is helpful to trainees.
The courses have been well received. One participant said: “The content and activities were useful and made the course fun, too.” Another trainee commented: “Every employee should experience this training: it is very informative.”
Many practical changes took place as a result of the training. They included an increased use of resources in an easy-read format. Appointment letters and times were modified to meet the needs of disabled patients, and communication dictionaries using pictures rather than words were developed. There was an increased use and purchase of hearing induction loops at staff events and in service areas, combined with the provision of further guidance to staff on how to communicate more effectively with staff and patients with hearing loss.
The trust is one of the first to respond, on a large scale leadership-training basis, to data that highlight how patients and staff with disabilities do not enjoy the same quality of experience as non-disabled patients and colleagues. It has since made changes to practices and policies which improve the access and quality of experience of both patients and staff.
Anita Thomas commented:
In developing the training materials, Pinsent Masons worked collaboratively with the trust to ensure they reflected the practical issues experienced by the trust in relation to promoting disability equality. By mirroring closely the circumstances in which managers might encounter disability-related situations,the training was credible and relevant to participants, which in turn has facilitated the effective transfer of learning to the workplace.
The program has been a significant success: level 1 and 2 evaluation results have been excellent, and more significantly managers are changing practices. They are improving how services are delivered and how employment is managed so that the needs of disabled patients and staff are more fully and effectively met.
