Over the past year, Glasgow Caledonian University has been working on a collaborative national practice initiative designed to demonstrate that utilising a Virtual Medium, SME’S in Scotland can be fully involved in meeting the European objective of becoming a competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy, at the same time as becoming a more cohesive and inclusive society.

The Gerontological Nursing Demonstration Project aims to support nurses providing care to older people living in Care Homes in Scotland at the same time as assisting in the improvement of practice standards. This Project, funded by EQUAL, seeks via a virtual environment, to explore and develop a virtual learning environment that has transferable applications to a wide variety of SME’s. The project is developing an innovative and accessible approach to providing training for workers in a private sector setting, allowing workers, to re-train and develop their skills, thus allowing them to realise their potential.

The target group comprises those who find themselves at a disadvantage due to their personal commitments (e.g. family responsibilities) or social background, workers in small companies often find it difficult to obtain time off for training. We made particular efforts to recruit from SIP and rural areas of Scotland, and have been successful in recruiting from areas in the Highlands and Islands and Borders. The average age of the Nurses involved in the care of older people is 45 – 54 years and many of them have been out of formal education and training environments for some years.

It has been important when considering the instructional design of the Virtual College to engage these adult learners in meaningful activities that they could see as relevant to their own work situation.

This project will develop a new approach to lifelong learning/continuing professional development among care workers and will demonstrate the applicability to other SME sectors. The Project seeks to extend practices and initiatives that increase the integration of practice, education and research that contribute to service improvement. Fundamental to the approach is a focus on collective and individual user perspectives and priorities. An understanding of these perspectives and priorities will provide real opportunities for improvement in health and social care.

Via the Virtual Colleges resource library, and by gaining access to their fellow college users, nurses specialising in the care of older people obtain access to local, national and international developments and their impact on older people from diverse cultures and localities. This can lead to greater feelings of relevance, improved senses of personal control, and a focus on humanity and dignity in the nursing professionals caring for older people.

The annual introduction of a plethora of policies and guidance for many Industry Sectors, sets challenges for all workers to keep up-to-date, and the development of a modified ‘Community of Practice (CoP),’ sharing and developing practice as well as learning and training through the Managed Learning Environment facilitates this process.

Our ‘Community of Practice’ is a group of nurses specialising in the care of older people, where they are interested in sharing, learning about, and advancing this area of nursing care. The web-based resources with tri-annual face-to-face study camps provides opportunity for participants to access information, identify and communicate practice problems, connect with practice area experts, and contribute to and share best practices

Currently we are negotiating with the Older People in order to get them involved in the Project on a more participative way. Soon two groups of older people will become ‘Expert Advisors’ to the Nurses on-line. This is an exciting development and we hope to extend this over the life of the project and beyond.