What can we do about health services that fail people with learning disabilities?
As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, many of our hospitals and health care services really aren’t geared up to address people with physical disabilities or sensory impairments. However, recent research suggests that the group who really lose out when it comes to the health care most people take for granted is people with learning disabilities.
Research carried out by Mencap found that almost half of the doctors and a third of the nurses they surveyed believe that people with learning disabilities receive worse health care than the rest of the population. Disability legislation requires the health service to make “reasonable adjustments” to accommodate disabilities, and yet the survey found learning disabled people were being failed because more than a third of health professionals had not had appropriate training.
In the case of learning disabled people, a reasonable adjustment might include: allowing more time for consultations, using a patient’s preferred method of communication and using their hospital passport.
A hospital or “health passport” is a document carried by a patient that includes key information about their condition, their likes and dislikes and things that they feel are important.
Mencap have a campaign called “Getting It Right” which sets out a standard of practice and aims to888888;"> make health trusts accountable to people with a learning disability, their families and carers.
The Getting it Right charter asks health professionals to:
- Ensure that “health passports” are available and used
- Ensure that all staff understand the Mental Capacity Act
- Appoint a learning disability liaison nurse in hospitals
- Ensure that every person with a learning disability is able to have an annual health check
- Ensure that all staff have learning disability awareness training
- Ensure that patients’ families and carers are listened to, respected and supported
- Provide information in a format that is accessible to people with learning disabilities
- Display the “Getting it Right” principles for all to see
With all the current emphasis on spending cuts, what are the odds of life improving for this group of already very vulnerable people?
What are your ideas?
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3 Responses to What can we do about health services that fail people with learning disabilities?
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Well, my immediate reaction is that far too many signs are deliberately worded in ways which make them indecipherable to a large proportion of the population, whether or not they have a learning disability.
As an example, how is an immigrant or person with learning difficulties supposed to understand “The Management kindly requests that you smoke in the designated area only”. Surely “No Smoking” would be more direct and effective?
Get rid of much of the the paper-shuffling NHS bureaucracy in which the only creative thinking is how staff can fill up their days with meetings to justify their existence, retrain them to do the medical paperwork that healthcare professionals now have to do – many in unpaid overtime – and so release the latter to spend more time learning about “Getting It Right” and other critical issues.
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