AP co-director Suzanne Quinney spent much of the end of 2017 training care home staff in the West Midlands. ‘Some of the staff that I trained as part of the WMAHSN (West Midlands Academic Health Science Network) programme to support Learning from Excellence were also working with care home staff,’ she says. ‘Having experienced AI themselves, they felt that care home staff would also value it and find ways to use it.’ WMAHSN runs a programme called SPACE – the Safer Provision and Caring Excellence – programme has been developed by the West Midlands Patient Safety Collaborative (PSC), and is being designed and delivered in collaboration with Walsall Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Wolverhampton CCG. It runs in 35 care homes across Walsall and Wolverhampton (all of which provide both residential services and nursing care) over 24 months.
Over 50 Wolverhampton and Walsall care home staff were able to attend half day introduction to AI seminars, or one day and two day courses, with Suzanne supported in these by the wonderful team at Wolverhampton CCG, and by the SPACE Quality Improvement Lead at Walsall Healthcare Trust.
Staff comments from an AI training session with Walsall Nursing Homes
Caroline Maries-Tillott, the Quality Improvement Lead at Walsall Healthcare Trust, says: ‘In one home, staff identified the home’s strengths and linked them to the five CQC domains. Staff found this a really helpful way to prepare for a forthcoming CQC visit, as they highlighted some real examples of practice and processes from their home that supported safe, caring, effective, responsive and well-led domains.
Suzanne says: ‘In my preparation for this training, I discovered the wonderful work being done with Care Homes using AI by professor Belinda Dewar and her colleagues at MY Home Life Scotland, and MY Home Life.
These two links will take you to some great examples of their work:
We also recommend watching this lovely video: Enhancing dignity and compassion in the care home- Belinda Dewar.
For more information about our work in care homes, please get in touch…
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