Healthmark Training Centre opens in Dubai to offset overwhelming healthcare demands in Malta

DB Group and James Caterers have combined their knowledge and know-how to form joint venture Kore Group Malta.

One of the companies operating under Kore Malta is Healthmark. Its mission is to consistently deliver top-quality health and social care services in the public and private sectors. This mission is delivered by skilled staff management teams in a client-centred environment and rooted in social responsibility. As we know, Malta has had a surge in both the local aging population and an increase in residents moving to the island from around the world. To keep up with the increasingly growing population, the country needs more healthcare workers coming in that are skilled and properly trained to do the job as competently as possible to meet the healthcare criteria throughout the island.

Malta is known to have one of the best healthcare systems in the Mediterranean and to keep up with those standards, the workers who come from overseas must be able to meet the standards and education with which we hold so high in Malta. Therefore, the recently launched Healthmark Training Centre, located in Dubai, requires these carers to go through additional training before they can enter the country.

The role of Healthmark is to identify the cultural and clinical gaps and upskill the trainees to meet healthcare standards in Malta. The process aims to facilitate and transition their journey to Malta and Europe and improve their proficiency to work alongside colleagues who are already familiar with the local training and culture. As CEO of Kore Group, Charlotte Sant Portanier says, “Before we go overseas, we go local but there are simply not enough applicants.”

The population has grown so fast that it has been nearly impossible to keep up with the demand of workers in the healthcare field hiring only from local sources. There are simply not enough trained healthcare workers in all aspects of a working hospital; including but not limited to food care services and patient services.

We had the pleasure of visiting this training centre in Dubai and meeting with Kore Group CEO Charlotte Sant Portanier along with Office and Training Coordinator Deepika Verma and learn about what they do at the training center.

The most important factors that are the primary focus at the training centre in Dubai include:

• The role of the care worker
• Safeguarding of vulnerable patients
• The importance of care planning
• How to deal with challenging behaviour
• The importance of how and to communicate effectively
• The importance of consent
• The principles of care and confidentiality
• How to deal with patients who have dementia
• Lifting and handling
• Food handling and hygiene
• Infection control
• Occupational health and safety
• Safe infection control practice
• Teamwork

In the Healthmark Training Centre in Dubai, the trainees are driven by clinical and non-clinical trainers inspiring strong and necessary teamwork. Communication is the key and this includes an aspect of Maltese language training which includes at minimum 20 words in Maltese that patients need their carers to understand.

The training journey continues throughout their employment with Healthmark including official licensing for health and safety, lifting and handling, and food handling. These three require 16 hours of training. Further compulsory training includes communication, constant watch and teamwork. The constant watch training is important because “at the end of the day they are dealing with extremely vulnerable patients and they have a huge responsibility on their plate”, Sant Portanier explains. Depending on their place of work in Malta, carers are then offered specific training including infection control, mental health first aid and dementia.

With the increasing demands within the healthcare sector of the entire country, this training centre that Healthmark has created serves as an invaluable tool to the people of Malta. This ensures that the carers who are brought to our island through Healthmark/Kore Group are competent, properly trained, and ready to work with the patients of Malta.

To learn more, visit their website here.