How our engaging, impactful and high-quality training delivers the best possible results for our clinicians and clients

Most clinicians don’t love statutory and mandatory training. Just the words can make it seem boring. It is, however, an annual requirement for all clinicians to complete it, and so we always aim to make it as informative and fun as we can.

The chances of people retaining information that positively impacts a patient is higher if training is engaging. I tell all clinicians in my training sessions that I hope they leave with at least one new piece of information. Many clinicians will have done this training a dozen times or more and may be confident they know everything, but there is always room to learn something new and improve upon your practices.

Positive feedback

The feedback we’ve received from our training sessions suggests our approach is working, with clinicians highly satisfied with their outcomes.

One candidate said: “The training experience was brilliant, the best training ever and very informative. There is no improvement needed. Thanks to the trainer, Sarah. She made me feel relaxed. I was truly satisfied and impressed.”

While another added: “This training was the briefest, yet most impactful training I have ever received. The trainer knew exactly how to engage trainees and how to get us to remember those life-saving lessons. Staff were very helpful and polite as well. I really enjoyed the training. It was excellent and conveyed information and knowledge very well. It was just perfect.”

Recipe for success

Part of the reason for our success is that we run sessions at times to fit in with clinicians’ working hours. We offer sessions during the day, during the evening and at weekends.

We have also taken feedback from all of our clinicians and clients, which we use to continually improve and refine our sessions. We use real-life stories and lived experiences in our training. We do, of course, protect people’s identities, but examples come directly from the clinical setting.

It’s also very important to HCRG Staffing that all members of our training team, including myself, have clinical experience. This means that all the people delivering the training are also doing the job, day in and day out. We all have practical, hands-on experience. We work with patients and are responsible for delivering care in our respective settings. It means we’ve experienced the scenarios we’re teaching others about. All our basic life support instructors do one day a year with a hospital resuscitation team, giving them an even richer experience of the skills they’re teaching.

Always making progress

One of the reasons I’m so happy with the positive training feedback we’re continually receiving is it validates the journey we’re on at HCRG Staffing.

I used to be called a subject matter expert and I disliked the title because it sounded like you had finished your learning. I prefer saying I have “subject matter expertise”, because everybody can always keep learning. Our training is always changing, as we react to national guidelines and things like the Covid pandemic. More recently, we’ve had to take into account the implications that mpox will have for clinicians and people’s behaviours. It’s why we insist that our trainers upskill and do more, learn more and experience more. There’s always more we can do. We will always modify things if we think improvements can be made.

Personalised learning

We can adapt training specifically for clients’ needs. For example, one of our customers asked us to add into sessions an orientation to their cardiac arrest trolley. This was not a mandatory requirement, but they said many of their team didn’t know what to expect when they opened the drawers of the trolley because they’re a mental health trust and their staff don’t often use it. We provided a detailed description of the contents of the trolley and photos of where everything sits, meaning the client’s nurses were much better prepared.

Making it as real as possible

There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that human factors have better outcomes on training sessions. Making training feel real to people makes a huge difference. For instance, we never allow a clinician or instructor to tread where the arms or legs might be on our

training mannequins, treating them as people from the start and making the mannequin feel more human is so important.

It’s all part of HCRG Staffing’s goal to make training fun, engaging, and impactful. We make sure people go away having picked up new information, as well as retaining and confirming what they already knew. People don’t have to fill in the feedback after the training sessions, but I believe the fact they do is a testament in itself.

As one participant said: “Everything about the training and its delivery was perfect.”