Healthcare

Award-winning Signs4Life is leading efforts towards a society in which people with disabilities have full access and are working to raise the public and political awareness of disability provision.

Our workshops might be of interest to your healthcare and/or non-clinical staff, in their work with vulnerable service users, families, and colleagues. We can come to you, or alternatively, we also offer remote learning via Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

It is well documented that those who are Deaf or experience hard of hearing have worse experiences of accessing health care. In a RNID survey, more than 35% of Deaf people left their GP appointment being unclear of the outcome of their consultation, as a BSL interpreter had not been booked for them. COVID-19 has exacerbated the problems faced by this community group, with the charity Sign Health reporting that 74% of those interviewed found it harder to access healthcare during the pandemic, with 89% having worries about being able to communicate with staff if they were hospitalised.

Our work has been designed to contribute to the reduction of health inequalities for those who are Deaf and hard of hearing, by providing a good practice intervention that will increase access to healthcare for those who are Deaf or hard of hearing, bettering their experience of accessing healthcare, with a hope to promoting health literacy and better outcomes for this community group.

Testimonials

“Just to let you know that today’s session was absolutely fantastic. Everyone was really involved, and Memnos was so engaging in his delivery.” (Judith Joyce, learning and development partner for High Secure Services and Broadmoor E&F, Broadmoor Hospital)

“I admit I had no idea the trainer would be Deaf, but it worked so well and was entirely fascinating, Alessia is a great teacher.” (Sarah Kavanagh, CEPN Lead, Sutton CCG)

“I found the session much more useful than I thought I would given the time slot of 3 hours. There was a lot packed into the time but all carefully planned for interaction of the attendees. The first half involved giving very useful insight into the problems that non hearing people experience and the challenges that they face. I really enjoyed the Q&A and how the questions were answered candidly. I enjoyed an introduction into how to use BSL in the second half. Definitely an area which we are lacking in inclusion.” (Tamika Chung, Home Treatment Team, South London and Maudsley NHS Trust)

“Excellent facilitators including BSL interpreters. Fantastic interactive session and learning outcomes. Highly recommend annual or bi-annual GP teaching sessions. Thank you.” (Dr Emem Okpon, Scarborough GP scheme)

“The training session was fantastic and our tutor was a truly inspirational and remarkable person. My colleagues all found it very informative and useful too. A thoroughly fascinating and interesting training session from Signs4life.” (Natasha Saleem, audiologist, London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust)

“It went really well and we had good attendance. Our tutor was excellent and the morning was very informative and engaging.” (Lesley Hastings, senior project manager, Moorfields Eye Hospital)

“I have just had time to look at the evaluations which were extremely good. Content and presentation were rated excellent by 70% of attendees with 20% in the “very good” category and 10% good. The comments were as follows: Very helpful presentation, enlightening. Thank you! Very good course. Best course in a long time (Wendy Bellis, Assistant Clinical Director and Specialist Senior Paediatric Dental Officer for NHS Islington)