Health Care Training Courses

Health care training is a specialist form of training for health care staff who work in a wide range of care settings. These settings may be day-care, domiciliary care agencies, dental practices, independent medical agencies, independent hospitals, clinics, nursing agencies, residential care homes, residential family settings, or nursing homes.

Within Northern Ireland, legislation is governed and enforced by the RQIA. The law places a duty on the registered person of the varying care setting to ensure that all persons employed receive training appropriate to their work. Healthcare settings can locate guidance on the RQIAs minimum mandatory training expectations on their website within downloadable documents named 'training guidance'.

In England, Scotland, and Wales, some training providers combine the required range of individual training requirements into one all-encompassing care certificate course, many of which are CPD accredited. Health Matters can facilitate this approach to help workers within the health and social care sector within Northern Ireland achieve their healthcare training requirements. Depending on the course type, certification periods typically range from 12 months to 3 years.

Here is a wide range of healthcare training courses available. Mandatory courses include orientation and induction, fire safety awareness, fire warden, infection prevention and control, adult safeguarding, basic life support (BLS), coping with challenging behaviour, moving and handling people, health and safety awareness and medicines management. In addition to these training courses, management and supervisory-level health care related programmes are also available, such as supervision, appraisal, and complaints handling. Most of these courses are included within the 15 standards for the Care Certificate.

Also included within our portfolio of healthcare training courses are more specialist courses such as those listed below:

• Anaphylaxis
• Bereavement awareness
• Catheterisation training
• Continence management
• Dementia awareness
• Diabetes awareness
• Digital rectal examination
• Dysphagia Awareness
• Administration of buccal midazolam
• Epilepsy awareness
• Falls prevention and management
• Human rights, deprivation of liberty, restraint and restrictive practice
• Intimate and personal care
• Palliative and end of life care
• Recordkeeping & confidentiality
• Tissue viability wound and pressure sore prevention and management

Another specialist course exclusive to Health Matters is the IOSH approved moving and handling of people train the trainer course. This course teaches suitably qualified individuals how to deliver moving and handling of people training to healthcare workers within their care setting. In addition, this course facilitates a cost-effective approach to training for care settings or groups with large numbers of employees to train or healthcare staff that require training at varying times.

Any course named and listed which is theory-based is available as an online course via Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Webex. Alternatively, healthcare eLearning courses are available on request to aid training rollout to employees within larger settings or those with logistical barriers. Health Matters can also deliver within care settings or from their purpose-built training centres in Newry and Belfast. Both locations are fully furnished with healthcare-specific training aids to facilitate a practical training experience.

Our high-quality courses, which healthcare professionals have developed, reassure employers that they are meeting their legislative requirements by employing healthcare staff with the appropriate skills and knowledge to deliver upon the remit of their role safely. Healthcare professionals can also use our healthcare assistant training courses for continued professional development purposes, contributing to the revalidation of their respective professional memberships. An example of this is the Nursing and Midwifery Council's (NMC) Revalidation which was introduced and became a requirement in April 2016. Thousands of nursing professionals have used Health Matters training courses to evidence a proportion of the 35 hours of continual personal development (CPD) required over three years. The courses utilised included those listed previously.

Whether working part-time, full-time or for an agency, every health care worker requires training appropriate to their role. This grouping includes health and social care support workers, health care assistants and health care professionals such as nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, and dentists.

Requirements will vary based on their work and the setting in which they locate. However, there are standard courses applicable to all levels and types of health care workers, whether a support worker or care assistant in a residential care setting or a health care professional such as a nurse in a nursing home. Therefore, our programmes can be categorised broadly into health care assistant training courses and professional level courses.

What differentiates Health Matters is our highly skilled trainers' ability to tailor delivery to suit the learners' specific needs. In addition, these health care trainers, all of whom have worked previously as professionals, can also advise employers on their training requirements, or provide employees with relevant tutor support during and after their learning journey.