Chief Nursing Officer also provides keynote speech at School launch
Date posted
2 September 2016
16:00
Last updated
19 March 2020
The University’s new School of Health & Social Care launched this week with the opening of a state-of-the-art room designed to aid the teaching of dementia care and other conditions in the community.
The opening of the room was part of a two-day conference held at the university’s Sighthill campus, which was attended by international delegates from as far afield as Sweden, Hong Kong and Singapore. The event also featured a keynote speech by Fiona McQueen, Chief Nursing Officer in Scotland.
The School is the largest and only provider of all four fields of nursing and midwifery at undergraduate level in Scotland, and speakers discussed how the applied nature of the University's research will be a key factor in influencing policy and overcoming the current challenges facing the health and social care sector.
On Friday, the CEO of Alzheimer Scotland, Henry Simmons, officially unveiled ‘SHELTeR’ (Simulated Home Environment for Learning, Teaching and Research), a brand new community room fitted in the Simulation and Clinical Skills Centre which will enable students to see first-hand the transition of care from clinical to community settings, particularly in relation to dementia-care.
Henry said: "I’m absolutely convinced that when we equip people with the right knowledge, skills and understanding, we’ll get good outcomes. The way to support people with that is in ensuring that we have resources like SHELTeR in every teaching environment.
Launch of the School of Health & Social Care
"SHELTeR demonstrates a layer of real innovative thinking and an understanding about the types of issues that we know make an environment dementia-friendly, and also how you can proactively build technology into this. I believe firmly that the more that we understand that, the more we’ll be able to support people with dementia to lead really good quality lives.
"Alzheimer Scotland warmly welcomes this important and insightful investment by Edinburgh Napier University. Ensuring that its Simulation and Clinical Skills Centre is dementia-friendly creates an opportunity to improve the students’ knowledge of the importance of environmental issues in the lives of people with dementia and their families. The majority of people with dementia live at home and wish to remain at home. It is an area that we know a great deal about and with the advances in technology alongside purposeful adaption it is one of the core pillars in our integrated care model."