This month SLC attended the Health Education England English Language Conference, a meeting aimed at bringing together NHS stakeholders to discuss the developments in English language support for NHS staff, including the recent NMC changes and UKOTN programme. Hearing directly from the NMC about the new "clubbing" routes and SIFE was very interesting and something we wholeheartedly support. You can find more details here and here.
During the conference we also heard stories and feedback from overseas trained nurses including those taught by SLC at Guy's and St Thomas and we are proud to have supported their journey into employment. In India our partner EBEK in association with Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust (AWP) and SLC, have now started a groundbreaking training course that includes OET training and co-delivered Mental Health Conversion programmes.
Mental Health Nursing is an area that can be difficult to recruit for and this education initiative is targeting to create 60 newly trained and OET-passed nurses during 2023.
We are now very close to the official launch of our OSCE preparation course and would like to thank all those who have shared feedback on the course content so far. The course will be renamed to "Preparation for the Nursing OSCE" and will be available from the end of April. The syllabus overview can be found here.
This month, almost 70 refugee nurses primarily based in the Lebanon started their online preparatory language courses prior to relocating the UK through NHS England, NHS Professionals and Talent Beyond Boundaries. These courses focus on building a strong foundation in the English used in Nursing and in using grammar accurately when communicating in a healthcare context. They are available via an app so enabling nurses with sporadic internet connections to use them on their phones and offline.
And finally, Chris Moore, SLC's Managing Director was invited to contribute to the British Council's TeachingEnglish podcast on English for Specific Purposes. As you would expect, he discussed all things medical English - what medical English is, how we design syllabi that meet the needs of the global healthcare sector, and the challenges that English teachers need to overcome when working with healthcare students and professionals.