BMS Resilience Training is specially designed for NHS Acute Trusts and is delivered by health and media professionals with many years experience.
“Nothing is real until it has been experienced”
Working in strategic alliance with Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, we offer 3 levels of resilience training and assessment to fulfill your legal and auditory requirements as mandated by the Department of Health in conjunction with the Health Emergency Planning Guidance 2005.
Each level of service offers full compliance with business critical and emergency recovery testing, delivered by health and media professionals who have many years experience facilitating this type of bespoke resilience training.
BMS has a proven track record of working in the NHS with hospitals, PCTS, SHAs, Mental Health Trusts and Ambulance Services. We have supplied media and crisis communications training together with and induction and other film projects for more than 30 trusts across England and Wales.
During a major incident, one of the main aims of your organization has to be to avoid major stress for your staff, and to avoid people working outside their comfort zones and therefore being inefficient. That’s the only way you can ensure you have done your best for everyone – for your team and of course for your community. BMS offers a hands-on way for you to understand how your people and your processes work under extreme circumstances, and whether you need some fine-tuning during ‘peace time'.
The training and testing offered by BMS underpins the fact that a vital part of recovery is reputation - reputation and trust take years to gain and can be lost in an instant: you need to have people who you know can and will defend that reputation in a way that's appropriate, should the worst ever happen.
According to the the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) 2004, Category 1 responders – like the NHS – must put in place workable emergency plans and have business continuity arrangements. They must also assess the risk of emergencies occurring and use this to inform contingency planning.
Level 1 training
Level 2 training
Level 3 training
Level 1 training consists of one day of emergency planning testing and training followed by an assessment and formal report for audit purposes.
Elements
1 planning meeting to prepare and develop a bespoke emergency scenario.
development and production of inject material including ‘live’ TV footage, radio inserts and Internet ‘pages’.
1 day testing/training session to deliver and facilitate your scenario, including intense external media scrutiny from journalists and reporters with national TV and radio experience.
a hot de-brief on the day
DVD of all filmed material
CPD ‘Certificate of Attendance’ for each participant
a formal report for audit purposes
Details
Prior to the testing/training day
BMS will initially examine your needs, assessing where you are in the planning cycle, how prepared you feel you are and whether there is a specific issue that you need to test.
We set aims and objectives together - looking at your local community risk register, where the hospital is situated, the kind of events you have encountered in the past - to help us develop a credible, bespoke scenario. We would then tailor make this exercise to meet the needs of your specific issue.
One of the most important elements we concentrate on is making sure the scenario is credible and does not tax reality.
On the day itself
We have two options in the way the session is carried out…
1. a structured facilitative exercise, stopping at designated intervals and interrogating the ‘players’ to help them understand their role and the consequences of their actions
2. a continuous, uninterrupted test in actual time where live news injects flow in a logical way to pressure test how internal decisions have external repercussions via real-time consequence management.
At the end of the exercise we would deliver a structured debrief followed by a formal written report to be used for audit purposes which proves you have fulfilled DoH requirement.
The cost for this service is £4250 + VAT.
Level 2 training consist of 2 days training: one day of intense crisis media training followed by one day of emergency planning testing and training as detailed in Level 1.
Elements
1 planning meeting to prepare and develop a bespoke emergency scenario.
development and production of inject material including ‘live’ TV footage, radio inserts and Internet ‘pages’.
1 day testing/training session to deliver and facilitate your scenario, including intense external media scrutiny from journalists and reporters with national TV and radio experience.
a hot de-brief on the day
DVD of all filmed material
CPD ‘Certificate of Attendance’ for each participant
a formal report for audit purposes
1 day crisis media training for up to 10 participants
Breakdown
Prior to the testing/training day
BMS will initially examine your needs, assessing where you are in the planning cycle, how prepared you feel you are and whether there is a specific issue that you need to test.
We set aims and objectives together - looking at your local community risk register, where the hospital is situated, the kind of events you have encountered in the past - to help us develop a credible, bespoke scenario. We would then tailor make this exercise to meet the needs of your specific issue.
One of the most important elements we concentrate on is making sure the scenario is credible and does not tax reality.
On the day itself
We have two options in the way the session is carried out…
1. a structured facilitative exercise, stopping at designated intervals and interrogating the ‘players’ to help them understand their role and the consequences of their actions
2. a continuous, uninterrupted test in actual time where live news injects flow in a logical way to pressure test how internal decisions have external repercussions via real-time consequence management.
At the end of the exercise we would deliver a structured debrief followed by a formal written report to be used for audit purposes which proves you have fulfilled DoH requirement.
Prior to the Resilience Testing Exercise, we would host a one day crisis media training session for up to 10 participants from the trust, delivered by BMS who have more than 15 years experience at delivering training to a wide range of private and public sector companies and organizations including many NHS trusts and local authorities.
The day will contain some tried and tested media theory, but most importantly will include four practical sessions to offer participants the opportunity to be interviewed by professional journalists to test their ability to determine a core strategy and then present it with focus and authority. We will also present a fundamental theoretical framework based on strategy, simplicity and authoritative presentation.
By the end of the course, delegates will be able to:
feel more in control of a media or other professional ‘transaction’ through intense re-working of basic preparation and delivery techniques
quickly devise a robust strategic ‘position’ that can be delivered in short and long form interview scenarios
ensure they perform in a more confident and comfortable way in front of reporters, microphones and cameras in any situation – as well as delivering leadership and authority to a ‘live’ audience
be armed to deal with any type of media encounter, whatever the format
recognise how their voice and body language can help or hinder a media performance.
The cost for this service is £7250 + VAT.
Level 3 training consists of 3 days of training: one day of intense crisis media training, one day of emergency planning testing and training, followed by an assessment and formal report for audit purposes – then a one day emergency planning workshop to examine and develop your plan.
Elements
1 planning meeting to prepare and develop a bespoke emergency scenario.
development and production of inject material including ‘live’ TV footage, radio inserts and Internet ‘pages’.
1 day testing/training session to deliver and facilitate your scenario, including intense external media scrutiny from journalists and reporters with national TV and radio experience.
a hot de-brief on the day
DVD of all filmed material
CPD ‘Certificate of Attendance’ for each participant
a formal report for audit purposes
1 day crisis media training for up to 10 participants
Breakdown
Prior to the testing/training day
BMS will initially examine your needs, assessing where you are in the planning cycle, how prepared you feel you are and whether there is a specific issue that you need to test.
We set aims and objectives together - looking at your local community risk register, where the hospital is situated, the kind of events you have encountered in the past - to help us develop a credible, bespoke scenario. We would then tailor make this exercise to meet the needs of your specific issue.
One of the most important elements we concentrate on is making sure the scenario is credible and does not tax reality.
On the day itself
We have two options in the way the session is carried out…
1. a structured facilitative exercise, stopping at designated intervals and interrogating the ‘players’ to help them understand their role and the consequences of their actions
2. a continuous, uninterrupted test in actual time where live news injects flow in a logical way to pressure test how internal decisions have external repercussions via real-time consequence management.
At the end of the exercise we would deliver a structured debrief followed by a formal written report to be used for audit purposes which proves you have fulfilled DoH requirement.
Prior to the Resilience Testing Exercise, we would host a one day crisis media training session for up to 10 participants from the trust, delivered by BMS who have more than 15 years experience at delivering training to a wide range of private and public sector companies and organizations including many NHS trusts and local authorities.
The day will contain some tried and tested media theory, but most importantly will include four practical sessions to offer participants the opportunity to be interviewed by professional journalists to test their ability to determine a core strategy and then present it with focus and authority. We will also present a fundamental theoretical framework based on strategy, simplicity and authoritative presentation.
By the end of the course, delegates will be able to:
feel more in control of a media or other professional ‘transaction’ through intense re-working of basic preparation and delivery techniques
quickly devise a robust strategic ‘position’ that can be delivered in short and long form interview scenarios
ensure they perform in a more confident and comfortable way in front of reporters, microphones and cameras in any situation – as well as delivering leadership and authority to a ‘live’ audience
be armed to deal with any type of media encounter, whatever the format
recognise how their voice and body language can help or hinder a media performance.
Following the media training and resilience testing days, we would return about 10 days later to scrutinize your emergency plan and look at your performance from the 2 training days in an objective and structured way.
We would assess ways in which your plan can be improved, discuss potential additions to the plan, or indeed any elements which are surplus to requirements, and suggest ways forward for the organisation having looked constructively at the plan to see how the ‘players’ performed against the original objectives on the day.
One of the main criticisms we encounter about emergency planning is that the plan doesn't hold up to first contact with the ‘enemy’. The Constructive Workshop is of real benefit to emergency planning colleagues as it is a peer review of their plan against the structured exercise.
The cost for this service is £10250 + VAT.
The lead trainers for BMS Resilience Training come from health and media professional backgrounds.
Andrew Dunn is the Emergency Planning Officer for Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust. Previously he has held similar posts for Birmingham & the Black Country and for West Midlands Ambulance Service.
He is a qualified university lecturer and holds honorary Senior Lecturer status with the Faculty of Health, Psychology & Social Care at Manchester Metropolitan University leading a module in MSc Health Incident Command. He is an A&E nurse and NHS manager by background, regularly teaches at the West Midlands Fire Service Academy and has had a huge amount of experience in dealing with a wide range of major incidents, planning for and delivering exercises and training.
Andy Hitchcock is Director of Communications and Training at BMS. He has more than 10 years media and crisis communications experience backed by 25 years in broadcasting.
He is a former news bureau chief for BBC News at Pebble Mill and The Mailbox in Birmingham. Andy worked on the main news on BBC One, BBC News online, the Today programme and BBC Breakfast as well as being a News Editor at ITN. He has also worked as a programme editor for BBC Radio 5 Live in London and ITV Central. He presented daily radio programmes for BBC and Independent Local Radio for ten years before moving to BBC television. He has also been a reporter and producer at the BBC’s Political Unit at Westminster and worked for BBC Training both in the UK and overseas. Andy has an MA in Mass Communications.
Remember, nothing is real until it has been experienced: let BMS Resilience Training put you to the test.
Contact:
Andy Hitchcock, Director of Communications & Training, Broadcast Media Services Ltd
