Training for Health Services and Support Staff in the ACT

The Health Care Consumers Association (HCCA) offers an introduction to health literacy course for people that health literacy is a new concept for. The  training package covers:

• An introduction to heath literacy: Key concepts and tools for frontline workers
• Values: Personal values and past experiences influence health care interactions. Reflect on your own values and your organisation’s values to become a more effective advocate for people facing health literacy challenges.
• Action: Practical skills and strategies for frontline workers, and an introduction to organisational health literacy.
• Access: Learn about how the health system works, important health services in the ACT, and strategies workers can use to help people overcome barriers to services and get the care they need.
• Communication: Support better communication between health professionals and service users and learn how to communicate well with service users about health matters.
• Safety: Understand risks in health care (emotional, physical and financial), know what makes a health service safe, and learn strategies to help someone stay safe when using health services. Includes informed consent and safety before, during and after a hospital admission.
• Information: This session introduces ways to help someone find, understand and act on health information, sources of reliable health information, and tips for managing health information.

HCCA can deliver these workshops as short sessions of 20 to 30 minutes or longer sessions of around 1-1.5 hours. We can also tailor the program and combine sessions to meet your organisation’s needs.

HCCA also runs training on topics like writing health information for consumers, cultural diversity in health care and supporting consumer representatives.

Please contact us or call 02 6230 7800 to discuss your requirements.

More Training for Health Professionals

Swinburne University – Global Health and Equity Centre

Swinburne University of Technology runs a master class Health literacy for health service improvement and community development.

It is a 3-day intensive course for managers, executives, health professionals, health planners, policy makers, researchers and people working in health promotion and community services. This masterclass will demonstrate how to develop interventions to reduce inequity in health service access and engagement.

To explore more about the Global Health and Equity Centre’s work in health literacy you can visit their website. For information about training courses, you can contact them at [email protected].

Free online course

Vic Primary Care Partnership have partnered with health and human services organisations across Victoria to develop free online training for organisations to build health literacy knowledge and skills.

The course is suitable for all staff, regardless of their existing knowledge of health literacy. It includes five modules, relevant to different staff roles and responsibilities.

You can find the online course here.

Further training

The Centre for Culture, Ethnicity and Health offers online training in health literacy, plain language, cultural competence and more. You can see their courses on their website.