Infection Prevention for Vulnerable Patients (FutureLearn)

Identify the unmet needs of vulnerable patients

You’ll begin the course by learning what it means to call a patient ‘vulnerable’, and which kind of patients this refers to.

You’ll then explore how to identify the unmet needs of vulnerable patients and how you can help combat this within your healthcare practice.

Using real-life case studies, you’ll examine topics like care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic and how homelessness, mental illness, and poverty can lead to vulnerability.

Reflect on your own personal experiences in dealing with vulnerable patients

You’ll also explore the different ways a patient might be classed as vulnerable and the problems faced in their treatment.

Reflecting on your own personal experiences in dealing with vulnerable patients, you’ll decipher how this could be improved.

You’ll then study the health of migrants and refugees and develop your understanding of the legal and ethical responsibilities with regards to these types of patients.

On the final section of the course, you’ll examine religious and cultural differences and how these must be navigated in patient care.

Learn from infection control experts at the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC)

Throughout the course, you’ll be learning from experts at the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC), an inter-professional organisation with 50 years of experience in education, research and leadership.

What topics will you cover?

- What do we mean by calling a patient “vulnerable”.

- How elderly patients are vulnerable, using a case study of COVID19 care home outbreak.

- Migrant/refugee health and the legal and ethical responsibilities of healthcare professionals

- Homelessness, mental illness and poverty: how these factors can lead to vulnerability and how we must tackle these health inequalities.

- Language, culture and religious barriers between healthcare workers and patients.

Learning on this course

You can take this self-guided course and learn at your own pace. On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

- Identify the unmet needs of vulnerable patients and how you can help combat this in your healthcare practice

- Discuss the various case studies presented and how these can be learnt from in future scenarios

- Explore the different ways a patient might be classed as vulnerable and the problems faced in their treatment

- Reflect on your experiences dealing with vulnerable patients and how this could be improved

Who is the course for?

The target audience for this course are healthcare professionals at a junior doctor level who are looking to improve their practice and become more aware of how healthcare can be made more accessible.