Training Courses

Working as a member of staff at West Berkshire Mencap, I have to attend training sessions regularly. Below are a brief summary of the training sessions I have attended and a few things they've taught me.

Buccal Midazolam/Rectal Diazepam & Epilepsy Awareness
In this training sessions we learned when and how to administer these 2 drugs and also basic knowledge about Epilepsy, which is a neurological disorder that causes various types of seizures, such as tonic clonic, myoclonic and absences. Buccal Midazolam and Rectal Diazepam are used to stop convulsions of a seizures, which if prolonged can cause brain damage and severe muscle damage. The people I work with use Buccal Midazolam after 5 minutes of a tonic clonic seizure. So far I've never had to administer either medication.

Medication Theory
This is a training course where after the theory part, you are assessed in your practical skills in administering medicine to clients. In the theory part, we discussed the laws surrounding medication in supported living. The main things I took away from this training were that gloves MUST be worn when handling any medication, even tablets and that we cannot administer any medication, even non-prescribed, PRN (administer when necessary) drugs, such as E45 cream, without written consent from the client's GP, no matter whether the parents have given permission or not.
Something we discussed that had never occurred to me, but I took particular interest in was the issue of chewing tablet medication. Each tablet/capsule has a certain coating, such as enteric or film coated, which affects when the coating is broken down and thus when the medication absorbed into the bloodstream. For example, if a tablet has an enteric coating, which is designed to dissolve in the non-acid conditions in the intestine, it will be broken down in the intestine and absorbed into the body only then. However, if the tablet is chewed or crushed, this leaves a surface of the drug without the coating, meaning it will be absorbed into the body before reaching the intestine, which would affect the medication's effectiveness and duration.
This course gave me direct insight into how medicines must be administered and also how they are designed, such as the coating, in order to fit their purpose.

Safeguarding Children
This was a course I had to do to work with children. It ran through the procedure of reporting suspected child abuse and how to identify it. We looked at famous case studies of child abuse where the result was death of a child, such as "Baby P".