Developing and Facilitating Learning in Urgent & Emergency Environments

This interactive, practice-based course is designed for Health and Social Care Professeionals working in urgent, emergency, and other high-pressured clinical environments, who want to strengthen their skills in developing and facilitating learning that directly supports service improvement and helps reduce pressures on urgent and emergency care.

Every organisation holds a wealth of frontline expertise—but in pressured settings, that expertise is often underused as a learning resource. This course enables practitioners to harness that expertise to build collective capability, improve flow, reduce duplication, and enhance patient experience through targeted, context-aware learning.

You’ll explore:

• Adult learning theory and how to adapt it for time-limited, high-pressure clinical environments;
• Learning styles and neurodiversity, ensuring learning is inclusive, accessible, and psychologically safe;
• The teaching and learning cycle—from identifying need to evaluating impact;
• Facilitation, coaching, and mentoring skills for real-time learning and performance support;
• Learning activities and environmental approaches suited to fast-paced and multidisciplinary teams; and
• The opportunity to design, test, and refine your own learning activity, with peer and facilitator support.

The course is aligned with the Three Shifts from the NHS Long Term Plan and Workforce Plan:

• Hospital to Community – by developing local learning capacity across integrated pathways, reducing reliance on hospital-based escalation.
• Sickness to Prevention – by equipping practitioners to embed proactive, preventative education within patient and staff interactions.
• Analogue to Digital – by integrating digital tools and blended learning methods that sustain learning beyond the classroom.

You’ll leave with a tangible learning activity, a suite of practical facilitation tools, and renewed confidence to turn everyday practice challenges into structured, impactful learning—supporting workforce resilience and easing pressure across the UEC system.

Learning Aim

To enable AHPs and nurses in urgent, emergency, and high-pressured environments to confidently design and facilitate inclusive, theory-informed learning that enhances workforce capability, improves patient flow, and contributes to reducing pressures on urgent and emergency care.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

1. Apply adult learning theory to create relevant, problem-centred, and engaging learning activities within fast-paced care contexts.
2. Recognise and respond to diverse learning styles and neurodiverse needs, promoting equity, accessibility, and psychological safety.
3. Use the teaching and learning cycle to identify needs, plan, deliver, and evaluate impactful learning interventions.
4. Demonstrate facilitation, coaching, and mentoring skills that enable reflective, adaptive, and self-directed learning in teams.
5. Design and adapt learning activities and approaches (e.g. microlearning, peer-to-peer teaching, simulation, case reflection) suited to pressured clinical environments.
6. Integrate learning into practice to support the Three NHS Shifts—building capability for community-based, preventative, and digitally enabled care.
7. Evaluate learning impact and sustain improvement, using feedback and data to reduce system inefficiencies and strengthen workforce resilience.
8. Develop, present, and refine a personal learning activity, applying all course principles to an identified local challenge within the UEC context.