Should Learning Disability And Autism Training Be Included In Student Nursing Curricula?

Since learning disability training has been made mandatory for all practicing Nurses, should student nursing follow suit?

Training to deal with learning disabilities and autism recently became compulsory for all nursing and care staff after the Government included it in the Health and Social Care Act.

In March 2022 an amendment to the Act, proposed by crossbench peer Baroness Hollins passed unanimously following a House of Lords debate.

The amendment required provision be made for healthcare staff to receive ‘appropriate support, training, professional development, supervision and appraisal as is necessary to enable them to carry out the duties they are employed to perform’.

Baroness Hollins, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at St George’s, University of London stated: ‘It puts on statute a policy that the government has committed to undertake… it creates a code of practice which would consult on and set out how training would be scaled up across the country.’

Do you think this undertaking will be viable in the long term given ongoing shortages of Nurses, and if so, how realistic do you think it is to require more training time set aside from already understaffed healthcare settings?

Oliver McGowan Training, as it is known, was named in memory of autistic Bristol teenager Oliver McGowan, who died in 2016 after being given antipsychotic drugs by hospital staff.

His parents believe that his death was avoidable and that those caring for him failed to comprehend his needs and disregarded both his and their views.

They have been campaigning since Oliver’s death six years ago for improved training and awareness around autism and learning disability for healthcare staff.

As a consequence, in 2019 the government undertook to create and implement a standardised training regimen for healthcare workers. To oversee this, the government wants every integrated care board to have a named lead in learning disability and autism.

Do you think that such training should already have been a requirement for front-line healthcare staff and that it should not have taken an avoidable death and years of campaigning for such training to be mandated?

Over the past two years, in a trial involving over 8,000 healthcare workers across England, the training has been tested and evaluated in a variety of settings.

The training consists of two levels. There is a basic level (Tier 1) for all health and care employees who may occasionally interact with people with learning disabilities and autism, and a more in-depth Tier 2 for Nurses and others involved in providing more direct care and support.

Nurses who had participated in the training reported an improvement in their knowledge and skills, as well as increased confidence in communicating with people with learning disabilities or autism.

Overall, participants in Tier 2 training agreed or strongly agreed (87% on average) that the training had made them more aware of the needs of people with learning disabilities and autism in healthcare settings and had provided new ideas on how to better support such people in their own work.

If such training is incorporated into student nursing courses in the future, do you think that this will blur the lines between what adult, mental health, children’s and learning disability Nurses study and will this have an impact on them professionally later?

After hearing the amendment to incorporate mandatory learning disability and autism training into the Health and Care Bill being tabled in the House of Lords, Oliver’s mother Paula said she felt ‘ecstatic’, but also tearful.

‘It is Oliver’s legacy, but it is not just about Oliver. It is for all learning disabled and neurodiverse people. It is also for our health and social care professionals to have the skills to support neurodiverse and learning-disabled people. They don’t want to be in situations where they can’t help…’

It means that staff have to do the training and employers have to allow the space and time for it to happen,’ she explained.

So, do you think the compulsory training on learning disabilities and autism should be included in student nursing courses going forward?

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