Recently, we were delighted to present two Deaf Awareness Training sessions for Guy’s and St Thomas’ staff. It was presented by a profoundly deaf staff member, Welsey Nolan who, in his day job for Clarion, helps Deaf and hard of hearing people in South London find employment.  The event, organised by the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Team at Guy’s and St Thomas’, was celebrating National Disability week. They had information stalls, practical advice and support and launched their staff health passport on how to support staff with adjustments.

 Wesley said: 

“I taught them how to do the basic signs if they needed to communicate with a deaf patient or people outside of the hospital. This was very useful to them and every person walked away today feeling that more confident on how to work with a deaf patient. They were also given information leaflets we have about Clarion and also the basic sign sheets that we also taught them today. Overall a very productive and useful day at Guy’s and St Thomas’  staff members”.

Manal Sadik, Associate Director for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion said: 

 “It’s really important for us to care and support our staff as much as we care and support our patients. We promoted Disability awareness week at Guy’s and St Thomas’ with a variety of information stalls, practical support and resources to raise awareness of long term conditions and disabilities/ difficulties and to provide support to both the employee and  managers in how best to ensure staff can continue to work safely, effectively and happily.

We were also able to teach staff some basic British Sign Language to enable them to support patients and carers whilst in our hospitals”.  

Thank you so much to everyone at Guy’s and St Thomas’ for inviting us to this great event.