We know that sometimes people with learning disabilities don’t receive adequate care from the NHS. Many high profile reports and documentaries have highlighted the failings across health and social care and it’s noticeable that the mistakes that happen are often around regularly occurring themes (e.g. poor communication, ignoring advice from families).
We have been heavily involved in a new website from the General Medical Council that aims to teach doctors how to do better. The site identifies the issues, highlights patient perspectives and shows how professionals can put guidance into practice. It’s a very interactive resource with lots of video and online learning tools.
As you’d expect from this kind of site, it was a real team effort to put together, with a huge group of people involved from the word go, including people with learning disabilities, care-givers, health and social care professionals, researchers, managers, policy makers, information specialists, writers and film-makers.
Our input to the project was around web design, project management, information science and the development of the interactive learning modules that allow doctors to work through a set of real-life scenarios that highlight the issues and potential pitfalls involved in treating patients with learning disabilities.
We worked closely with colleagues from the Rix Centre to build this website for the GMC. Our resident learning disabilities expert John Northfield was instrumental in managing progress and keeping things running smoothly. Our talented team from Design By Day in Salford implemented the web design and interactive learning.