Academic Skills

Constructive oral and written communication, and the effective and ethical management and presentation of knowledge and information, are essential for both academic work at degree level and your professional practice. This unit will enable you to develop your understanding of the skills and conventions of academic study in higher education and within your discipline, and recognise their transferability to and relevance for your work with service users and professional colleagues. You will be encouraged to identify your own academic strengths, areas for development, and strategies to support your academic growth.  

By the end of the unit the students will have gained an understanding of key academic skills such as assessment planning, how to effectively use BREO, searching for and sourcing academic material, learning to reference and how to construct essays, presentations and consideration of the differences between academic work and professional report writing.

Inclusivity And Diversity In Care

The aim of this unit is to introduce you to the concepts and issues relating to inclusivity and diversity in care. At the end of the unit you will understand definitions of equality, diversity, inclusion and discrimination; and be able to consider consider the concepts of patient centred and individualised care planning, implantation and evaluation. You will also develop an awareness of cultural differences and their importance in care planning.

The unit will also help you to develop the following skills:

• Develop effective communication and observational skills
• Development of your practical application of skills, likely to be required on your forth coming clinical placement
• Work in person centred and collaborative practice
• Develop inter professional and interagency working skills
• Resilience, Collaboration, Leadership and management relevant to the content of this unit

Fundamentals Of Perioperative Practice

The aim of this unit is to enhance your understanding of the role and responsibilities of the nonmedical perioperative practitioner within the multidisciplinary care team. This role encompasses the scrub, circulating and anaesthetic aspects of the patient pathway. Emphasis will be placed upon the processes and procedures required to keep the patient safe throughout their perioperative journey and developing confidence when working with a range of service users and other healthcare professionals. This practice based unit provides students with an opportunity to work directly with various patient groups undergoing a wide range of surgical and anaesthetic interventions. 

Professional Identities For Operating Department Practitioners

The aim of this unit is to introduce you to professional values and concepts underpinning operating department practice and how these influence the development of professionalism including accountability, professional conduct, ethical practice, inter-professional working and evidence based practice.

The unit will also develop the following skills:

• Develop skills for autonomous practice and reflective thinking
• Develop effective communication and observational skills
• Demonstrate manual handling skills
• Practice and development of your practical application of skills, likely to be required on your forth coming clinical placement
• Work in person centred and collaborative practice
• Develop inter professional and interagency working skills
• Resilience, Collaboration, Leadership and management relevant to the content of this unit

Sciences For Perioperative Practice

This unit aims to help you apply the pertinent knowledge of human anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, sociology theory to perioperative practice to enable you to understand the unique needs of the service user.

In order to provide safe and effective patient care, it is imperative for the Operating Department Practitioner (ODP) to understand the underpinning scientific knowledge of the patient’s normal or abnormal physical functions to actions undertaken in the operating department.

The Operating Department Practitioner must be able to apply this knowledge to a variety of clinical settings, patient groups and individualised patient care needs.

Change Management And Innovative Practice

Working in healthcare means a constant strive to improve and enhance services and care provision for our patients and their families. The NHS and the Private, Voluntary and Independent (PVI) sectors seek out ways to evaluate what is being delivered and measure outcomes against expected performance and benchmarks. The role of the student ODP is to participate in this service enhancement by developing an awareness and understanding of clinical governance, clinical audit, benchmarking and service evaluation. By creating new ways of working we hope to provide safe, effective and sustainable patient pathways which keep the individual care needs central but optimise clinical resources.

The unit will equip students to carry out their own clinical audit and measure outcomes against a suitable benchmark or standard. This will build confidence for the level 6 project unit in year 3 with a clear curriculum theme running across both units. Being able to successfully design an audit and gather quantitative data will allow students to appreciate the value of performance monitoring and quality control in the clinical setting.

Pharmacology And Pathophysiology For Perioperative Practice

The perioperative care of each patient is individual and adapts to meet their specific clinical needs. These needs are assessed using knowledge of any comorbidities and psychosocial pathology and the various medications used to treat underlying conditions. 

This unit will give you further insight into the care of patients with underlying clinical pathology and help you plan, implement and evaluate the care and outcomes following surgery and anaesthesia. The perioperative pathway must be safely organised according to individual requirements and part of the ODP role is to identify potential risk factors and work collaboratively with the MDT to ensure safety and effective management. 

The ODP role also includes a sound awareness and understanding of the various medications used in the perioperative environment along with approved doses, routes of administration and contraindications for each patient.

Pathophysiology is concerned with the disease process and how physiological systems may be affected by chronic and acute conditions. In anaesthesia and surgical care the team must consider the impact of disease on perioperative needs and how best to manage each individual patient. 

Evidence Based Practice For Operating Department Practice

This unit enables you to develop an understanding of the relationship between research, practice and policy to assure evidence based practice in ODP. Students will develop a critical understanding of research paradigms, the construction of research designs, the selection of different research methods, data collection and analysis skills, and the ethical issues involved in undertaking research. These skills will not only enhance your critique of evidence for practice but prepare you for your final year ODP Research Project. 

Mental Health Matters

Mental health conditions and psychological distress often co-exist with physical illness and impact negatively upon quality of life and health outcomes, for example, 35% of patients admitted to general wards have a dementia diagnosis while15 -20% of patients admitted to general hospital exhibit delirium. Depression and anxiety are very commonly associated with physical ill health but are often missed during the assessment and treatment process. People with co-morbid mental health problems have poorer physical health outcomes than those without and stay longer in hospitals with increased mortality and poorer quality of life. This unit broadly seeks to answer the question: “what knowledge and skills do non-mental health professionals (ODP) require to confidently meet the mental health needs of people they encounter in their workplace?” The unit will equip students with the core mental health concepts to support patients or their carers - mental health needs while dealing with their physical conditions. No prior knowledge of mental health is required. 

Advancing Perioperative Practice

This unit will build upon your basic and fundamental skills and knowledge in order for you to progress to more advanced and challenging patient care, whilst encouraging your empowerment as a professional and your continued development as an evidence based practitioner through the use of reflection, evidence, and best practice.

You will undertake a range of clinical placements across both theatres and external care environments to enable you to develop awareness of other care pathways. You will work alongside other professional and community based teams and participate in service user assessment, care planning and implantation of treatment across a wide demographic. 

Development of both anaesthetic and scrub skills pertaining to emergency surgery, obstetrics, paediatrics and shared airway procedures.

The Postoperative care of all patient groups from a variety of surgical and anaesthetic modalities. This will include development of skills relating specifically to post anaesthetic care such as pain management, fluid balance and wound care.

Emerging Care Roles For Operating Department Practitioner

In line with the Government’s intention to expand Allied Health Professionals career pathways and utilise skills more effectively and efficiently, this unit aims to support you in developing your employability as a registered ODP. Skills which were once the preserve of specific professions are now being assumed by operating department practitioners and these new opportunities are an exciting advancement for our professional body. Emergent roles in critical care, A&E, specialist care services, transplant coordination and more showcase the wide potential for the ODP to move into other fields of practice. Theatre remains our base location but utilising the multitude of other clinical and theoretical skills gives practitioners a platform to demonstrate their adaptability. 

Operating Department Practice Project

A critical understanding of the relationship between research, practice and policy underpins the development of evidence-based practice.  In this unit you will prepare to undertake such research that informs policy, practice or the development of knowledge that defines your role as a profession. Cognitive dissonance with an aspect of theory, practice or policy will provoke a systematic review of pertinent literature culminating in the articulation of researchable questions. You will justify research methods and methodology and engage with the research process as a guide for planning a future research study. You will also develop an understanding of research ethics, informed consent, debriefing, and GDPR.

Supervision And Leadership For Perioperative Practice

This aim of this unit is to develop your understanding of the qualities of a contemporary operating department practitioner leader who has personal confidence, competence in communicating and awareness of the impact they make on others in professional circumstances. You will be given opportunities to explore a range of theoretical concepts associated with inclusive leadership and effective team working. During the unit you will be introduced to a number of tools, which will support you to reflect on your own leadership abilities and role in promoting effective team working.

This unit has a curriculum link to both level 4 and 5 units under the theme of relationship based practice. This helps to embed the principles of working collaboratively, ensuring equality, diversity and inclusion whilst providing effective leadership and adapting communicative methods to suit various learning styles. 

Medicines Management And Pharmacology

This unit provides you with knowledge of pharmacology within operating department practice. Operating department practitioners are required to promote and apply statutory, national and local guidelines relating to the ordering, storage, checking and administration of medicines. Accurately calculating drug doses and administering them correctly, using a variety of approved techniques, is central to your practice. Once administered the operating department practitioner monitors the effects of drugs on patients, taking appropriate and prompt action in the event of adverse reactions.

The aims of this unit are to:

• Develop your proficiency in the preparation of prescribed medications prior to administration of patients;
• Demonstrate comprehensive and evidence based understanding of the pharmacokinetic effects of drugs encounter by operating department practitioners
• Ensure you are able to effectively manage acute and chronic pain and post-operative nausea and vomiting for patients
• Monitor and respond to changes in fluid balance and systemic homeostasis to encourage patient stability.