At Cubro, we’re passionate about helping those who work in Healthcare to gain access to quality tools, training and education resources. We recently caught up with global moving and handling expert Deborah Harrison, about an exclusive offer she is making to New Zealand Healthcare providers, to give them access to the A1 Risk Solutions online training platform at a special rate.
My company, A1 Risk Solutions offers a comprehensive online moving and handling training and education platform designed to support healthcare professionals. The platform contains thousands of videos, safe systems of work, books, assessment tools and more. The platform is a valuable resource that can be used by various healthcare sector organisations to educate their workforce about best practice moving and handling practices and techniques.
Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, we have been offering organisations around the world 500 user licenses at a heavily discounted rate. We are now excited to extend this offer to healthcare organisations in New Zealand, so that they can give each of their workers access to all the resources within the platform to support their safe moving and handling guidelines.
When it comes to caring for people with impaired mobility, safe moving and handling remains a key challenge for healthcare providers. There is still a high risk of injury from moving and handling, and I am concerned that these risks could be heightened as healthcare services continue to grapple with the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In February, it became apparent here in the UK that COVID-19 was going to have a huge impact on our health, social and education sectors. Healthcare organisations across the world started recruiting new staff and focused on upskilling existing staff so that they could take on tasks they may have not done previously, like moving and handling.
I believe that our platform can really help support the efforts of healthcare organisations at a time when they need it most. I guess I feel a deep sense of duty to do my bit – after all we have the platform sitting there and ready to use. By giving care workers access to evidence-based moving and handling training and resources, I hope that healthcare organisations will be able to ensure their workers are up to speed with the latest techniques and can competently mitigate the risks involved with moving and handling people.
So, I decided that I would make it as accessible as possible by offering the platform to healthcare organisations worldwide for a very small fee to help cover our administration costs.
We offer a range of videos that are used across health, social care, community elder care, aged care and universities. They cover moving and handling techniques with and without equipment and include specialist areas like palliative, paediatric and bariatric care. The platform also includes techniques like proning and general load handling. With each video there is an accompanying safe system of work.
The platform is designed for everyone who is involved in moving and handling people. This often includes Nurses, Carers, Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists, Moving and Handling Coordinators and Informal carers like family or support workers.
The platform covers many specific areas of moving and handling and we are always working to create more. The topics available currently are:
Given that social distancing is our ‘new normal’, using our training platform is a practical way for organisations to provide quality moving and handling training to their workers, without physically bringing people together. Better still, remote teams can learn safe moving and handling practices and techniques from their homes.
It also gives organisations the opportunity to provide on-demand training to new employees and upskill existing staff in a consistent and cost-effective way.
Our system was evaluated as part of a workplace pilot by Parker (2018). The pilot study found it was used consistently throughout the 9-months by those participating in the workplace pilot and provided many benefits. They have since embedded this into their way of working since 2016. The main findings highlighted that the system provided support between manual handling updates; enabled easy skill refreshers as required by individuals and also provided access to relevant supporting documents. The study also found that the video content provided a range of practical advice and techniques to help users find possible solutions to moving and handling challenges, and the handouts of safe systems of work were well utilised in patient records. Users felt it reduced their reliance on fruitless searches of ad hoc internet videos and information, that often led to and embedded poor practice. It improved the practice of the team and stimulated independent learning, bringing several unexpected benefits; it assisted with a consistency between services, reduced out of date practices and gave valuable information when assisting with complaints, accountability and governance issues.
Yes, they are currently using the platform to help educate their students about moving and handling. They believe it has been significantly beneficial in supporting their students learning and have nearly completed a four-year longitudinal study to highlight the difference the platform has made to practice, safety, skills and reduced errors. The study is currently under review and due for publication soon, which is very exciting for us.
I’m offering access to the platform at non-profit pricing to any New Zealand organisation who wishes to purchase bundles of 500 user licenses at a cost of $1 NZD per user.*
If any organisations are interested, they can fill in their details on our website https://a1risksolutions.co.uk/content/covid-19 and I will be in touch with them.
*Each licence is valid for 6 months. Terms and conditions apply. For full details please get in touch with Deborah via https://a1risksolutions.co.uk/content/covid-19