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A new elearning session on sustainable dentistry has been released today, on NHS Sustainability Day 2016, as part of the e-Den (Dentistry) programme. The resource provides an introduction to climate change and explores the main principles of sustainable practice and their application in dentistry. It encourages clinicians and managers to make sustainable choices and identifies practical tools and resources to support this.

The NHS has a carbon footprint of 22.8 million tonnes CO2e per year. This includes emissions from building use, travel, purchasing of goods and services and commissioning1. Dentistry contributes 3% to this footprint2 which equates to 0.9 million tonnes CO2 per year. With climate change reported to be the biggest threat to global health in the 21st century, sustainable healthcare is more relevant now than ever. Training in this area is becoming increasingly valuable as the need to improve value from finite resources and move towards low carbon, high-quality models of care becomes more apparent.

The elearning resource has been developed by dentists, Devika Vadher and Divya Verma, working with the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH) as Sustainable Dentistry Scholars – part-time roles funded by Health Education Kent, Surrey and Sussex.

The launch of the elearning resource coincides with NHS Sustainability Day 2016 on 24th March which is a nationally recognised day for action on climate change, engaging everyone across the NHS and social care systems.

For more information on the elearning session, visit http://portal.e-lfh.org.uk/Component/Details/424027

Summary Care Records (SCR) is a national service that allows healthcare staff free access (at the point of care) to key patient information that lives in their GP record, to help them make decisions and choices about the care they provide. The information is made available via the National Spine, which is managed and maintained by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), and is accessed by the use of an NHS Smartcard. Each SCR is created, and updated in real-time, by the GP system when a patient visits their local GP and information about them gets added, like new, or changes to, medication, for example.

Almost all (97%) of registered patients in England have an SCR with this information contained and having it readily available as part of consultations or when patients make unscheduled visits to other parts of the NHS, and indeed in other parts of the country, can play a key part in providing safe and secure clinical decisions. Patient’s SCRs are already being viewed by a number of different healthcare settings including acute Pharmacy, A&E and acute Assessment, Urgent Care Centres, Ambulance trusts and paramedics as well as telephony based services such as 111 and Out of Hours – and 60,000 patient episodes of care a week are affected by this information exchange.

The HSCIC programme that manages the development and delivery of the SCR service designed a prototype training module that has been successfully used to educate and train users across a wide variety of NHS users of the service. The team were able to build a feedback mechanism into this and have listened to users and professionals alike on their thoughts on where it would benefit from a slight re-design/refresh. Version 1.0 of the SCR elearning resource is now here and ready to be tried and tested both to inform and educate users as to what SCR is, how SCRs work, how to get access and use the service as well as how the capability has changed to give access to a much greater breadth of patient information. There are videos, sliders and enhanced viewing tools to keep the training as interactive as possible and even a short quiz to test your SCR knowledge, as well as links to further information and who to contact for help to get you up and running.

Having electronic access to patient information held in other places has been identified as a key requirement for the NHS and the Summary Care Record service can very simply and easily support you to achieve this. The service is supported and endorsed by healthcare policy and regulatory bodies as well as key national charities. This elearning resource is one way that we can deliver the message and education at scale as we believe it’s simple and straightforward, but is only part of a wider ‘blended’ learning and integration solution we can provide.

For information on how to access the SCR elearning resource visit http://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/summary-care-records/.

The SETs (SBAR Education through Technology and Simulation) is a three part course for care home staff. The initial part of the course is an elearning module on the potential uses of SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment and Recommendation) communication in care homes. This elearning module sets out the principles of SBAR communication with worked examples to enable staff to then undertake an in situ simulation course where they develop these skills further. Finally a series of free podcasts is being produced to cement the learning with further worked examples and reaction to the simulation sessions.

For more information visit http://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/sbar-communication-in-care-homes/

The ‘One Chance to Get it Right’ report, produced by the Leadership Alliance for the Care of Dying People in June 2014, set out the approach to caring for dying people in the last few days and hours of life identifying five Priorities for Care. The report also made recommendations on the desired characteristics of education and training programmes. One of the Health Education England (HEE) commitments in the One Chance to Get it Right document was to conduct research into the development and evaluation of education and training methods and programmes which addressed uncertainty and communication when caring for the dying.

The End of Life Care for All elearning programme (e-ELCA) has been recommended as part of a blended learning approach by the ‘Training and Education in End of Life Care‘ report, commissioned by HEE to review the efficacy of existing education and training resources on end of life care.

Why not take a look at the new ‘Making the most of e-ELCA’ guide? It is simple and concise, designed to provide a brief overview of factors that can help organisations maximise the effectiveness and value of using e-ELCA.

For more information, please visit the updated e-ELCA website: http://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/end-of-life-care/