New equipment helps healthcare professionals sharpen their skills at Glyndwr

Healthcare professionals are fine-tuning their skills at in Wrexham with the latest training equipment thanks to a major funding boost.

Students on the MSc Advanced Clinical Practice programme at Wrexham Glyndwr University are honing their examination skills on equipment funded by a £250,000 Health Education and Improvement Wales grant.

The funding also covers renovations to facilities used by the MSc students, training and new uniforms for staff, as well as an IT digitalisation programme.

Gilly Scott, joint programme lead for advance clinical practice, explained why the funding is so important to the students’ progress.

“It’s absolutely fantastic because we want to move our students into 21st century education using different kinds of pedagogy and simulation-based education is a very good way of embedding deep learning,” she said.

“Simulation-based education is really important because it lets them practice in a safe environment, so it’s very important that they do it a lot all the way through the programme.”

A mixture of healthcare professionals including paramedics, pharmacists, physiotherapists and nurses use the equipment to practice abdominal, heart, lung and neurological examinations. They are then tested at Glyndwr and also by their mentors at work.

Kerry Hooton, from Kinmel Bay, is a GP nurse but has a background in surgical, vascular and intensive therapy units (ITU).

“It’s good for clinical examination. Quite often you’ll sit with clinicians and they’ll do the history, they’ll do the full consultation but you won’t actually get hands-on so this is really valuable.”

Amanda Price, a clinical nurse specialist in palliative care at Wrexham Maelor Hospital, said that the new equipment would enable the MSc students to provide a better service to patients.

Of the course itself, she said: “It’s really enjoyable – hard work but really informative and you get lots of practical experience in practice and also in the classroom.”

More information about studying MSc Advanced Clinical Practice at Wrexham Glyndwr University, can be found here.