On 24 September we had the joy of being able to visit a healthcare organisation and deliver in-house training. I’m not going to lie to you, it was an absolute delight! After such a long time, our 80 days on furlough and so much hardship and disruption caused by the pandemic, it felt like the day may never come again. Standing in front of real, living and breathing people in the same room and just 3 meters away from us was totally inspiring!
First things first, we have to pay tribute to the healthcare team that made onsite training possible. We know many clinical audit and QI staff have not been into work since March, so let us tell you what a staggering job is being done in the first against COVID. We felt utterly safe from the moment we drove into the car park and we greeted by an attendant checking people were in the right place and giving clear instructions, through to being temperature checked on our arrival in reception, to the moment we stepped into the adapted training room! Add to that: clear one-way systems for those moving round the building, sanitiser available at almost every opportunity, clear signage reminding everyone what they need to do to stay safe and those being trained helping us at every opportunity (all from much further than 2 metres away).
What was it like to be back in the classroom? Before answering that, for us it was great to be back on the road again travelling over 200 miles from Leicester down to the South Coast. And it will sound sad, but it was lovely to see and spend time in a Premier Inn again! That said, we soon learned just how different things are now… arriving too late to get a breakfast slot and thus enjoying the adventure of tracking down the nearest greasy spoon in the middle of a business park in order to ensure we’d enjoyed some food before kicking off the training!
Surprisingly perhaps, delivering training to people in a classroom setting after such a long break felt remarkably normal. We’d expected a few blips and hiccups on the way, but thankfully they didn’t materialise.
Clearly both virtual and classroom-based training have their place, but this experience reminded us that in-house is arguably less stressful and easier. Of course, when we are out on the road there is always the initial re-occupation with: a) can we find the location and the training room and b) will the IT work, etc. But with virtual training the fear of an IT ‘wipe-out’ almost never goes away and we find it exhausting having to listen and simultaneously try to keep abreast of chat and what online learners are doing. For us the one MASSIVE benefit of classroom training is that in an instant you can see all learners and therefore see and understand when they want support, or want to raise a question, or what to inter-act, or want to debate something, etc. Looking after everyone via online learning and reading non-verbal clues just isn’t the same as classroom training. And of course, running interactive activities in teams is just easier in groups around a table than via online virtual breakout rooms.
It was lovely to see full bodied people in front of you wanting to learn and not having to say ‘please un-mute’ every 5 minutes! The other noticeable benefit of classroom training was what we will refer to as the ‘water-cooler conversation’. During the breaks we had some really fruitful chats with learners, that ranged from a suggestion that plenty of NHS staff should have been put into the furlough scheme (!), to informing us that the CQC had prosecuted a hospital in Plymouth for failings in duty of candour. To be fair, you can pick up useful information via online learning, but people probably tend to be more open and willing to share information when they are having a one-to-one chat with a tutor.
Looking forwards training will clearly never be the same again. And the more I spend using Zoom and MS Teams the more I improve. For now, I still prefer meeting people in person and training in a classroom. But then again, after arriving home after a mind-numbing 5-hour drive, service station food and limited time with my family before bed… maybe I’ll change that view in the near future. Who knows?
ALL HAIL:
Sam Riley and her team at NHS Improvement for recently announcing the popular ‘Making data count’ courses will now be available online each month. If you want to learn more about SPC charts and why RAG ratings are often flawed, then this one-hour update session is for you. We’d encourage you to follow @samriley on Twitter and you can find out more in terms of booking on the sessions, here.
ALL FAIL:
Derriford Hospital in Plymouth (part of University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust) who sadly become the first hospital to be successfully prosecuted by the Care Quality Commission for failings in duty of candour! You can read more about the death of 91-year-old Elsie Woodfield and the catalogue of failings that the CQC exposed here.
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