Michelle Gorringe explores the significance of lifelong learning in healthcare, and why she and the other Newcross Healthcare founders set up FuturU to make healthcare education free and accessible to everyone.
Why is lifelong learning so essential in healthcare?
Throughout my career, there have been significant changes and advancements in healthcare, so continuous learning is important for staying relevant. It means you can deliver the best care, implement new practices, and adapt to the latest technologies, ultimately benefiting patients and colleagues.
We all face moments where patients expect us to have all the answers. There’s nothing worse than having imposter syndrome, where you feel like you don’t know enough or don’t have the right to be there. Ultimately, confidence comes from what we’ve learned and applied, which is why it’s so important to keep educating. Plus, on a more personal level, the more we learn, the more we grow as individuals. I can confidently say that lifelong learning is liberating!
How can communities benefit from advancements in learning?
Over the past few years, Newcross has invested in education programmes that allow healthcare professionals to deliver more complex care in the community, rather than solely in intensive care or high dependency units. For example, we can now safely care for and support ventilated children and adults, as well as those with other complex medical clinical needs who require around the clock care. This wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago as the risks were too high.
Technological advancements in learning have enabled us to build a highly skilled and educated healthcare workforce. This has had a hugely positive impact on care recipients, as it allows them to stay at home with their families instead of being confined to a hospital room. Newcross now has the confidence to place healthcare and nursing staff into more acute settings because we know they have the relevant skills and knowledge. Education is the foundation of all of this.
How has your work at Newcross inspired you to improve healthcare learning across the sector?
Our approach at Newcross Healthcare has always been to invest in comprehensive training for our staff, ensuring we have the best talent in the sector. One way we’ve done this is through our innovative “virtual shift” training experiences, which use computer gaming technology to provide immersive, interactive simulations that train our staff to better meet an individual’s physical, clinical and emotional needs. These have proved hugely popular among Newcross staff, who complete tens of thousands of training hours each year.
At Newcross we have provided free training for all of our staff for a number of years and have been constantly amazed at their thirst for knowledge and development. However, we were aware that large numbers of healthcare staff were paying for training and we wanted to address this. So we decided to create FuturU as a way of offering best-in-class education for free across the entire healthcare sector, with no hidden fees or catches.
What excites you most about FuturU?
FuturU eliminates the financial barrier to education and provides a platform for people to educate themselves for free in a way that’s truly flexible. Whether you have childcare responsibilities or other demands, it can be hard to find the time to complete training. FuturU lets you learn at your own pace from the comfort of your home, without having to go into a classroom and give up your whole day. In the future, my hope is that FuturU will be able to offer flexible nursing degrees that people can do around family commitments, without getting into debt.
I’m also excited about FuturU’s potential to not only elevate healthcare standards but also attract individuals to the sector. There are fantastic career opportunities in social care and the NHS, and the beauty of this sector is that there’s a place for everyone.
