Welcome to VirtualOutcomes where we provide GP surgery training for your entire team. As you may already be aware, everyone that works within a surgery is required to keep up to date and further their healthcare education. This includes receptionists, business managers, nurses, pharmacists and doctors among many others.
For GP surgeries and community pharmacies alike, continuous healthcare education and training is essential to better understand their local communities. It’s important to know the situation within a community in terms of their health, well-being and existing health inequalities. Promoting health and preventing long-term conditions are key priorities for the government and GP surgeries can play a pivotal role in educating their patients.
GP Surgery Training
VirtualOutcomes is a leading institution that provides online training for the whole surgery team as well as community pharmacies. Our online training courses are short but powerful and will help healthcare professionals further develop their knowledge.
Everyone benefits from GP surgery training as they learn why it’s so important to start conversations and how to engage with the local communities. For more information, please visit our online training centre. In fact, we have just finalised the first GP Surgery course which is free for all surgeries in the country. VirtualOutcomes will also donate £0.25 to CRUK for each registration.
Prevention Is Better Than Cure
The Department of Health and Social Care released a ‘Prevention Is Better Than Cure Report’ in November 2018 stating that prevention is about helping people stay healthy, happy and independent for as long as possible.
It is a fact that healthy lifestyles and public health programmes have led to widespread improvements with compelling success stories. For example, millions of people now benefit from NHS health checks and the rate of smoking in England has dropped from 29% to under 15% between 1990 and 2017.
According to the Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, “We have made great progress in improving the health of the nation – helping people to live longer lives. However, people are spending too many years in poor health, with these gains in health not felt equally across society.”
He continued by saying, “This is not inevitable; much of ill health could be prevented. Prevention is crucial to improving the health of the whole population, and helping secure the health and social care services we all value and rely on. It will also boost the health of our economy.”
GP Surgery Training Programmes
Among others, surgeries have access to the VirtualOutcomes Cervical Cancer Screening online course to help teams talk to their patients. You can access the training materials on our website. Surgeries will need to evidence their continued training and support for all staff members and VirtualOutcomes can help achieve this.
Touching on the importance of cancer screening, the dreaded disease is associated with several risk factors and not always age-related. Lifestyle choices are also known to increase cancer risk especially smoking, excessive drinking, over exposure to the sun, obesity and even practicing unsafe sex. If people were to change these habits rather sooner than later, they will lower their risk of cancer.
GP surgeries can make a big difference in properly educating the public about such health issues and preventative measures. This means providing people with the necessary knowledge, skills and confidence to take control of their own lives, their health and social care. It can also help making the healthier choices as easy as possible. Using this calendar of health campaigns can help you plan ahead and create informative, engaging health promotion campaigns in your surgery.
National Health Campaigns 2019-2020
The whole of March 2019 focuses on ovarian cancer and the importance of regular check-ups. If left undiagnosed for too long, it can start affecting other parts of the body. For more information on cancer screening, read this interesting articles, ‘Importance Of Cancer Screening Programmes’.
Some of the other National Health Campaigns include the following:
- 11 – 17 March is Nutrition and Hydration Week as well as Brain Awareness Week
- 13 March is No Smoking Day and you can even download this is booklet to help you quit smoking
- Go Purple on 26 March for Epilepsy Awareness Day
- April is Bowel Cancer Awareness and Stress Awareness Month
- 1 – 7 April is World Autism Awareness Week
- 22 – 28 April is Allergy Awareness and MS Awareness Week
- May is National Walking Month
- June features MND Awareness Month (Motor Neuron Disease)
- 10 – 16 June is Cervical Cancer Screening Week
- 15 August is Cycle To Work Day
- September focuses on several campaigns such as Sickle Cell Awareness, Vascular Disease, National Blood Cancer Awareness and Urology Awareness
- 1 – 28 October is Stoptober with a campaign to quit smoking for 28 days
- October is also National Cholesterol Month
VirtualOutcomes Support GP Surgery Training
To support GP surgery training, we have a host of online training courses available. We strongly advise all team members to ensure that they remain up to date to provide the best possible healthcare services and advice to the public.
VirtualOutcomes provide helpful, relevant and vital healthcare information on a number of topics including cancer screening, smoking, obesity, mental health, diabetes and fall prevention among others. Contact us to find out more about our courses and how you can register.