What happened in January?

2023 kicked off at pace as we worked on a variety of projects in different parts of the world.

Chris, our MD, visited CR British, SLC’s partners in Sri Lanka. He attended an awards ceremony, giving certificates to students who had successfully completed SLC’s English for Care course as part of their NVQ in Health and Social Care. He presented OET to a large group of nurses, some of whom are now on SLC OET Preparation and Foundation courses, being prepared for the test by SLC’s expert teachers in online classrooms with the on-the-ground support of CR British.

Chris also met senior nurses, the Deans of the Nursing faculties at Colombo and Open Universities, as well as students, teachers and the team at CR British. A hugely successful visit establishing a firm foundation for future training projects, and a chance see the beautiful country of Sri Lanka. We’re very much looking forward to returning.

SLC launched its new course, Living and Working in the UK. This course is designed specifically for nurses relocating to the UK. It gives essential information on what nurses should expect to discover when they arrive – from the weather to transport to festivals to accents and idioms – as well as on the NHS, the NMC, roles and responsibilities, revalidation and legal frameworks.

We extended our teacher training services by designing and delivering a series of professional development seminars for lecturers at Humanitas Medical University in Milan. The sessions focus on building the language skills and techniques used when giving lectures to large groups of students in English.

SLC started working with new refugee nurse groups in partnership with NHS England. Nurses are based at hospitals around the country, many having resettled from Jordan and Lebanon. They are preparing for OET so they can register and work in the UK. We’re delighted to be part of their journey.

We renewed our contract to work with Trusts across London on the HEE-funded UK Overseas Trained Nurses project. SLC will be be working with Kingston NHS, Barts Health NHS and Guy's and St Thomas NHS as leads to support overseas trained nurses in the workforce across London fulfil their ambitions of registering with the NMC. 

SLC has also been chosen to offer support and capacity building services to CES University in Medellin Colombia in an initiative funded by Solent NHS to open new recruitment markets for nurses through innovative education projects.

SLC's involvement with EALTHY, the go-to site for all things professional development for English for Healthcare teachers, continued to grow. We added more lesson plans and activities to the Resources section of the EALTHY website and organised a fascinating webinar on developing a Medical Ethics course. More to come in February!

Finally - we wish every success to our India partner EBEK as they host Bristol and South West ICB senior managers on a recruitment drive pan-India. SLC will be involved in providing OET preparation courses for a cohort of 60 Mental Health nurses.