Lauren Barrett

I work as part of a small team across all three of Leicester’s acute hospitals. I support patients with a learning disability when they come to hospital and also support hospital staff to ensure that the care and support they are providing is accessible for people with a learning disability. This involves delivering general learning disability awareness training on our induction programmes and developing bespoke training for specific areas when a need is identified. Within my role I also help to develop pathways to help streamline and improve patient experience for people with a learning disability.

I think the fellowship will allow me to link up with other nurses working in different areas who can share their experiences and the experiences of the people they work with when accessing the acute hospital. I will then take this back to the hospital and see what improvements we can make or if there is anything that is used elsewhere that we can implement. I am also hoping this fellowship will be able to help me to set up our own listening group for people with a learning disability, to ensure we are always hearing what experts by experience have to say.