Putting public protection in the spotlight

We are on the road in Gloucestershire today to officially re-launch our ‘Older, wiser …be sure’ campaign with an exclusive screening of our new film at the National Care Forum’s managers’ conference.

The ‘Be Sure’ campaign is aimed at care home managers, carers and older service users, urging them to check that their health and care professional is registered and to raise any concerns about their conduct or competence. The campaign draws on research we have done that shows most older people do not check whether the person treating them or the person they are caring for is registered.

Checking that a health and care professional is registered with us is vital because it is the only way you will know if the professional meets our national standards for training, skills and behaviour. It is also important because it offers you protection if the professional fails to meet these standards, as we can take action against registered professionals.

In order to convey this message to a wide audience in an engaging and thought-provoking way, we chose to refresh the campaign with a dramatic film that shows what can happen when things go wrong.

The film depicts three older service users, ‘Doris’, ‘Rasheed’ and ‘Rose’, who receive inadequate treatment from both registered professionals and unregistered practitioners. Meanwhile ‘David’, a stretched care home manager, learns how quick and easy it is to check the register when a professional comes to see one of his residents.

Making the film was a great learning experience for our team. We carefully researched the chosen scenarios, which are partly based on actual fitness to practise cases. To make the film as accurate and realistic as possible, we shot on location at a care home, in a hospital and at a house. We also had HCPC registrant partners involved to coach the actors on good and bad practise for their respective professions. This was a wonderful opportunity for us to interact with our partners and learn more about their roles on a day-to-day basis.

It was also a good opportunity to see professional filmmakers at work and to appreciate how much time and effort goes into getting that perfect scene. There were some great acting and make-up artist skills – keep an eye out in the film for a very realistic-looking foot sore!

I hope the work that everyone put into making the film as realistic as possible will really get people thinking about the importance of checking that their health and care professional is registered and remind them that they have recourse if things go wrong.

If you are not joining us in Gloucestershire today, you can watch the film below. We will also be showing a shorter version of the film at the Care Show in Birmingham next month, so do stop by and say hello if you will be attending.




Ebony Gayle
Media & Public Relations Manager, HCPC

Notes:

Check the register online at www.checkthregister.org

Study amongst Older People aged 70+, Ipsos MORI Research Institute for the Health Professions Council, 2008.

A short version of the film is available at: youtu.be/PO8MuHeVaYY

To find out about other regulated professions see : www.hcpc-uk.org/aboutregistration/regulators

HPC builds an iPhone App

Modern mobile devices like the iPhone are changing the way people access and share information. There is already an expectation that organisations should make their services available online, but now more than ever people expect those services to be fully functional from their mobile device.

At the HPC we are seeing the number of people accessing our services from mobile devices increasing. As an organisation looking to extend our reach to the public and our stakeholders to raise awareness of our regulatory role, it is a communications channel that we simply cannot ignore.

Mobile apps allow organisations to tailor information and services specifically for mobile devices, not only to ensure that the information is fully accessible from a smaller device, but also to utilise the specific strengths of these devices, such as GPS technology, social media integration and multimedia capabilities.

For me the key to building a successful mobile app is to focus it around a specific audience, and not to attempt to do too many things for too many people. The best apps that I have used tend to focus on a specific utility and perform it very well.

With the public as our primary audience, our focus was getting across our key messages, namely, who we are, what we do and how to raise a concern about a health and care professional.

However our strongest message is to encourage people to check that their professional is currently registered, ensuring that they are practising legally, safely and effectively, and they are entitled to use a protected title.

When we recently redesigned our online Register (accessed through our microsite hpcheck.org), we built new infrastructure which allows us to integrate this utility through other channels, and our new mobile app was perfectly placed to make full use of this.

The challenge for us was to design a mobile interface that made searching the Register easy, clear and accessible, and I would like to think that we've achieved that.

We were also able to integrate our RSS feeds giving users access to the latest news and media releases from the HPC. There is also the added benefit of users being able to save any relevant news items, as well as share items with friends and colleagues.

We have also managed to make use of the iPhones’ multimedia capabilities by including our ‘raising a concern’ brochure for download, and our video on 'understanding fitness to practise hearings' which can be viewed directly from the app.

We feel the new app uniquely extends the reach of the HPC Register, as well as providing another communications channel for our stakeholders.

We do not, however, see this as a finished product, and we are already looking at ways in which we can improve and extend the app in the future. You can download it free from the iPhone App Store now, and please tell us what you think by emailing us at: app@hpc-uk.org


Tony Glazier
Web Manager, Health Professions Council