Blue Stream Academy: Supporting the Frontline

Article | Lewis Cowlishaw, Content Development Manager at Blue Stream Academy

COVID-19 is the single biggest public health emergency in the history of the NHS. The response of health and care workers who have come forward to help – the tens of thousands of former staff and students, and the hundreds of thousands of volunteers – has been nothing short of inspirational.

The NHS was the first health system in the world to begin rolling out a clinically approved, safe and effective vaccine, and is now working hard to vaccinate those who will benefit most in hundreds of hospitals, local services and care homes across the country. Larger vaccination centres are also standing by, ready to use when supplies allow.

We are all grateful to the tens of thousands of people who have applied and trained for a vaccination role. Although there are now enough vaccinators to deliver the number of doses available to the NHS, this will continue to be a huge task. To ensure that we can continue to vaccinate millions of people as quickly as possible – while keeping other vital services going – the NHS is still recruiting for thousands of paid and volunteer roles.

With scientists across the globe working hard to create and deliver these effective vaccines, it is essential that your staff are trained to administer the vaccine to as many eligible groups as possible.

As the UK’s first lockdown was announced in Spring 2020, organisations struggled to get to grips with the new legislation, as the landscape seemed to be shifting from day to day. There was a clear need for up-to-date and relevant information in a single platform that users know and trust.

To meet that need, our in-house development team began to build a range of resources to support health and social care professionals.

Blue Stream Academy's Vaccinator Passport

Our COVID-19 Staff Support Toolkit was launched in March last year and is now used by thousands of professionals throughout the UK to provide up-to-date organisational guidance through a single point of access.

With no more second-guessing required, organisations could finally breathe a sigh of relief. If they needed to find out anything about COVID-19 that might affect their healthcare business, the COVID-19 Staff Support Toolkit was there to help.

As rumours about the development of vaccines grew louder, it seemed as if the end could be in sight. With rival companies competing for the top spot, the mainstream media fuelled speculation about the origins, costefficiency and overall effectiveness of these vaccines. It became clear that politics around the world was changing the narrative.

As the names Pfizer/BioNTech, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Moderna, Novavax, Sputnik and CoronaVac became commonly used in the media, it was clear that there would once again be a need to distil information into one manageable resource. With that in mind, we developed, tested and released our COVID-19 Vaccination Training module in December 2020, and it quickly grew into the NEW Blue Stream COVID-19 Vaccinator Passport.

The Blue Stream COVID-19 Vaccinator Passport helps to train vaccinators to administer the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines safely and effectively in line with the guidelines set out by Public Health England.

It contains all the training and information required for the COVID-19 vaccination programme, as well as the following vaccination-specific modules:

• Core Knowledge for Vaccinators

• Legal Aspects of Vaccination

• Vaccine Storage

• Vaccine Administration

• COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech)

• COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca.

The response from our customers has been amazing, and thousands of trainees have used the passport on their journey to becoming a COVID-19 certified vaccinator.

…excellent module – much more practical than other providers– thanks!

We’re offering both resources to our existing customers free of charge, so if you or a member of your team requires this training, get in touch with us today!

If this is the first you’ve read about these new resources, stay in the know! Be sure to sign up to our mailing list and Subscribers’ Club to be first to hear about any new developments in 2021 – we’re sure to have a few!

For more information or to subscribe today, get in touch on bsatoday@bluestreamacademy.com

Lewis Cowlishaw, Content Development Manager at Blue Stream Academy

Lewis Cowlishaw is the Content Development Manager at Blue Stream Academy and oversees the research, writing and development of our eLearning content while liaising with subject matter experts from across the UK.

“Our enthusiastic in-house development team ensure we stay on top of the latest developments” says Lewis, “The key to success at BSA is about being on the pulse of the healthcare sector, having a devoted following of passionate users certainly helps!”