Award-winning resources launched at the Eisteddfod

Prize-winning Welsh-medium Teaching Resources that have been awarded the Welsh Government Welsh Language in Healthcare (Education and Training) Award, are being officially launched at the Bangor University stand at the National Eisteddfod at 11.00 on Friday 5 August 2011.

Having received the backing and financial support of the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol (the national institution for the development of Welsh medium education and scholarship at universities in Wales), for their venture, a team from the School of Healthcare Sciences at Bangor University has led the project to develop teaching resources for their nursing students, so that they can receive specialist training in nursing people with learning difficulties through the Welsh.

As well as extending the range of higher education available in Welsh the teaching materials also contribute towards ensuring that people with learning difficulties receive the same standard of healthcare as the rest of society, an issue identified as not currently happening at a national level.

The bilingual resources will be available not only to train nurses at Bangor, but across higher education nurse education in Wales, standardising the provision across Wales in this important area and providing it in Welsh for the first time. The resources will also be available to anyone working in the healthcare sector working with people with learning difficulties and wanting to do so in the Welsh language.

 Ruth Wyn Williams, a Welsh Medium teaching Fellow at the School, who is leading the project and who won the £1,000 Award, said:

“Every graduating student nurse is expected to have developed a basic understanding and awareness of nursing people with learning disabilities. We are also conscious of the need to provide professional nursing staff who are able to practice in a bilingual setting.”

Dafydd Trystan of the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol said: “I am delighted that the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol has backed the development of materials in the nursing field. Independent evidence shows that the ability to practice professionally bilingually has a positive effect on the patient, it is therefore very important that  nursing students’ opportunities to study in Welsh are substantially expanded.”

Publication date: 29 July 2011