The fact that care homes provide a 24-hour service for nearly 400,000 residents has, until recently, been overlooked by many. Little is known about night-time care practices, with focus solely on day care resulting in night workers being left out of the loop.

According to a recent study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), many care home residents are missing out on quality care during the night, often enduring hours of disturbance and unease. Residents, especially those suffering from complex diseases such as dementia, have the right to access professional and fully trained staff at all times of the day.

Night staff, are generally not given the same respect or supervision by their managers as day staff, are commonly excluded from fundamental healthcare training. This affects their ability to work efficiently and effectively, putting residents in danger as signs of pain, thirst or hunger are going unnoticed. Lack of training and management has resulted in night staff feeling isolated and anxious, and many are suffering from a culture of over-checking. Night-time care workers are carrying out frequent and haphazard checks for things such as breathing and incontinence, leading to the unnecessary disturbance of residents.

With the main barriers to educating night staff lying in funding and the logistics of sending employees off site on training courses, e-learning could just be the answer. E-Learning supports streamlining, cost effectiveness and economies of scale. This is achieved through significant reductions in the delivery costs of training, as web based learning allows the night care worker access to materials anywhere and anytime, to suit their requirements. Learners can study from their place of work or from the comfort of their own home, eradicating the problems of having to employ cover for night staff who are sent off site to train.

As learning is likely to be a new experience for night-time workers, the ease and accessibility of an e-learning course will motivate them to learn more, rather than providing a daunting experience. User-friendly platforms can be used by both advanced learners and those with basic IT skills, meaning learning can be entertaining yet informative. E-Learning courses can also be highly customised, with content delivered to suit the individual requirements of the learner – whether online, on CD, or on a touch screen PC.

Chris Parr, head of products and markets at ThirdForce, a global provider of e-learning and assessment software, believes there should be no differentiation for staff to access training in terms of part time, full time or shift work: “It is important that care managers realise there are training courses out there offering packages to suit night staff. E-Learning is flexible, inexpensive, and accessible – an ideal solution for night-time carers who can work in their own time and at their own pace. Like day staff, night staff are entitled to full training on how to deal with complex cases like dementia, and residents are entitled to 24-hour care. With e-learning readily available, there is no excuse for care managers not to train each and every member of staff working in their care home.'

ThirdForce Corporate Background

With 20 years experience, ThirdForce is one of the largest e-learning providers in the UK designing innovative, blended e-learning solutions. ThirdForce reach over two million learners in education, government, healthcare and commercial organisations worldwide meetings many of the industry's Common Induction Standards.

Blending technology, multimedia and pedagogy into unique learning experiences that lift performance and raise standards, ThirdForce provides a wide portfolio of e-learning solutions including European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL), Health and Safety training and Care Inductions standards.