Primary Care patients in Sefton to benefit from a new initiative

Sefton based Primary Care patients with a learning disability (LD), are to benefit from a new initiative designed to help them through some of the more intimate examinations that could be faced in Primary Care.

When a number of General Practitioners (GPs) across Sefton asked if anything could be done to help patients with a learning disability understand what to expect when an intimate examination is needed, the Sefton Training Hub, set to work.

Maggi Bradley, Clinical Nurse Lead at the Sefton Training Hub, says “going to the doctors for an intimate examination can be embarrassing and scary for anyone. Now imagine if you don’t understand what’s going to happen and why! This is the problem we were facing.”

The Sefton Training Hub already works with learning disability nursing students from the Faculty of Health, Social Care and Medicine at Edge Hill University, and together they developed a plan. Deciding to take advantage of the university’s ultramodern patient simulation suite, students walked through a number of scenarios, demonstrating processes and procedures, explaining them in simple terms while an Edge Hill University media student expertly filmed and edited each scenario into a short video which can be played to patients in GP surgeries.

Nurse Maggi continues, “this has been a fantastic collaboration, resulting in an exceptional piece of work which will provide previously unmet benefits to patients with specific needs. We hope people with learning disabilities will, at the very least, feel less nervous when an intimate procedure is called for.”

Three videos; vaginal examination; rectal examination; and breast examination are now available to use across all GP Surgeries in Sefton.