Building work started this week to create a £1.25m health and social care academy at the University Hospital of Hartlepool.
The Hartlepool Health and Social Care Academy which is part of North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust’s Faculty of Leadership, Learning and Improvement is one of five of Hartlepool Borough Council’s £25m Town Deal transformation projects and secured £1.25m in funding to support its development.
Leaders from North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, Hartlepool Borough Council and Hartlepool College of Further education were invited to the ‘spade in the ground’ event which was attended by NTH Solutions design and development project manager Michael Jones, who will oversee the project being carried out by contractors Vest Construction. The project, which began earlier this month, is expected to be completed by July 2024.
Michael Jones, who is leading the project said: “This is a really exciting project for the local community, I’m looking forward to seeing it progress. We are really pleased to be working with Vest construction for the first time who were successful in securing the work through the tender process.”
The state-of-art health and social care skills academy will see ward 10 at the University Hospital of Hartlepool transformed into a training suite supporting the careers of the next generation of health care professionals. Once complete, it will feature a bespoke simulation training suite among it’s realistic, health care settings including house a six-bed training bay, two ICT suites, a trainee common room and several other flexible training and class rooms.
The academy will be one of only a handful in the country with purpose built medical simulation suite. The Academy with wide ranging pathways to access qualifications, will be focused around multiple fully-equipped rooms which replicate a range of environments that trainees will be working and training in, such as:
- Acute care: including patient and clinical equipment simulators for training in maternity, general clinical skills, intensive care treatment, major incidents and trauma;
- Specialist clinical procedures: including simulation for endoscopy
- Community: including simulation of ‘at home’ health and social care scenarios such as community health, dementia care and child and vulnerable adult safeguarding
Neil Atkinson, managing director of North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for the Trust to complement the services we operate out of Hartlepool and to ensure we have the right pipeline of qualified staff working across the health and social care system in the future.”
