Upskilling care home staff has a big impact on the NHS
Posted on 23rd August 2022 at 06:29
A study completed by the Health Foundation has found that upskilling care home staff and a better working relationship with the NHS has resulted in a major reduction in residents being admitted to hospital.
During the Covid19 pandemic, care homes had little option but to keep residents at the home who might otherwise have been admitted to hospital. On some occasions the care homes contacted NHS hospitals for advice, which ultimately led to fall in emergency admissions. I am not, you understand, suggesting that the situation during the pandemic was acceptable, but it does go some way to prove that care homes could take a lot of pressure away from the NHS. But how?
To enable care homes to reduce the pressure on the NHS, upskilling staff must be the first option. Staff could be upskilled to deliver more routine care and better preventative care, which could reduce hospital admissions. For instance, some fractures caused by falls may be avoided with an appropriate risk assessment into falls prevention.
Course Detective can offer many different types of training for care home workers, which may include topics such as “Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults”, “How to complete Risk Assessments” and “Health and Safety” – the list, to be honest, is vast. Add this to the training which the NHS is looking to help provide to care homes, such as management of indwelling catheters and drains, basic wound care, and administration of some medications, and you have a truly holistic approach to the care of the elderly which will undoubtedly help to reduce the stresses on the NHS.
In 2021 the government published figures showing that the elderly population accounted for around one-fifth of the UK population (19%) was aged 65 or over in 2019, or around 12.3 million people. The number of people in this age group increased by 23% between 2009 and 2019, at a time when the whole UK population only increased by 7%. You don’t need to be a maths genius to understand that the elderly population is increasing exponentially. This is something to be very proud of, our medical research and advancements seem to know no bounds and are ensuring the life expectancy of our population is increasing. There is a knock-on effect though in that the pressures on elderly care and the NHS increase too. Seeing these figures confirms the need to increase the quality of care we can offer to our elderly population. One of the ways to achieve this would be by upskilling care home staff.
Our ever-ageing population is not something that is about to change, if anything we are likely to live even longer in the future.
Tagged as: upskill
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