COVID-19 Update - Message from Buttercups Training’s Managing Director, Vanessa Kingsbury

On behalf of everyone at Buttercups Training, I want to ensure you that your patients and staff in training are at the heart of all we do. I commit to you that our continued actions will be responsible, clear and adaptive to the ever-changing situation.

We will endeavour to minimise any disruption to your service whilst we make ourselves available to train your staff for their important role. For those of you with apprentices on programme we will be as flexible as we can. We know that those in self-isolation may wish to spend time working on the programme but that this will not be your priority when fulfilling duties as healthcare staff during this time. For off-the-job training during this period, we ask instead that learners keep a concise log of the new knowledge, skills and behaviours developed on a weekly basis and study when they can. The pandemic is a completely new situation to us all and therefore the opportunities it presents for learning are significant - updates, process changes and new SOPs will all count towards new learning and will count towards their training.

Blanket breaks in learning will remove access to course materials via the b-Hive learning system. We would prefer to leave the option for learners to have the opportunity to continue submitting work if they want and are able to do so - in particular this may be beneficial to learners in self-isolation who wish to continue studying the knowledge elements of their programme. Breaks in learning also mean that any work currently pending assessment are placed on hold until the end of the break, which prevents our team finalising current submissions.

This is not the time for us to be setting targets that cause you more difficulty. I give my assurance that we will work with you. To this end we are developing a very short course for medicine counter assistants who are seconded to the role and need the important basics. This will be available at no charge and we will not enrol on an individual basis - it will be a tutorial that your pharmacists can show to staff they need to call on at short notice.

Our usual numbers are available - and feel free to contact me at any time.