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Equipping the NHS with vital skills

15 April 2020

The Chantler Simulation & Interactive Learning Centre on Guy’s campus is supporting workforce training for the Guy’s and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, enabling staff to gain new clinical skills through simulation-based learning.

The team have created training videos to teach staff how to respond to common scenarios that they might encounter and how to adapt their knowledge and skills to work with COVID-19 patients.

Most recently, the Centre has hosted critical care training for registered nurses, supporting the clinical response to the pandemic. The nurses are already part of the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT) workforce and are upgrading their skills

The teaching is available for up to 140 NHS staff a day, taught by teaching faculties from the hospitals, and supported by five volunteer technicians from the Chantler SaIL Centre and the NHS Foundation Trust.

Training is key in ensuring we can re-deploy staff to help treat patients in COVID critical areas and King’s has helped in allowing us full use of training facilities during this time. In three weeks we have trained over 1,100 clinical staff across GSTT and this volume wouldn’t be possible without spaces from King’s.– Igor Tanjga, GSTT Medical Education Service Manager

The team have created training videos to teach NHS staff how to respond to common scenarios that they might encounter and how to adapt their knowledge and skills to work with COVID-19 patients. This includes correctly donning and removing the PPE and alternative ways to check for symptoms that reduce close personal contact.

The Centre will continue to offer these services until it is needed once again for King’s students when they are able to return to campus.

The Chantler Simulation & Interactive Learning (SaIL) Centre in Shepherd’s House on Guy’s Campus is an interprofessional undergraduate and postgraduate facility that provides clinical classrooms, hospital and community care settings. The Centre uses state of the art audio-visual and electronic equipment, including computerised manikins, ensuring feedback, evaluation and analysis of sessions can be readily carried out.