{"id":517,"date":"2026-06-08T20:37:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T19:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/surgerywebtemp.org.uk\/m86017\/?page_id=517"},"modified":"2026-06-08T20:37:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T19:37:25","slug":"learning-disability-friendly-practice","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/surgerywebtemp.org.uk\/m86017\/learning-disability-friendly-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning Disability Friendly Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Disability\n

Here at Mansfield Medical Centre, we want to ensure that all our patients have equal access to healthcare.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Patients who live with a learning disability face more barriers to accessing healthcare.\u00a0Having a learning disability can affect how a person learns new things throughout life. Depending on the complexity of their learning disability, they may need a range of extra support throughout life.<\/p>\n

Video: A guide to Annual Health Checks for people with learning disabilities<\/a><\/p>\n

Why focus on people with a learning disability?<\/h2>\n

Having a learning disability affects the way a person understands information, and how they communicate. This means they can have difficulty understanding new or complex information, learning new skills, or coping independently.<\/p>\n

People with learning disabilities have individual strengths and abilities. These should be recognised alongside meeting any support needs that are identified.<\/p>\n

Care and support services for people with a learning disability should be person-centred, empowering them to make their own choices about what’s important to them in their lives.<\/p>\n

Around 950,000 adults and 300,000 children in England have a learning disability. Many people with a learning disability experience poorer health, and die at a younger age.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Over 20 years less life<\/h2>\n

Compared with the wider population, the average age at death for people with a learning disability is 23 years younger for men, and 27 years younger for women.<\/p>\n

Reducing health inequalities<\/h2>\n

Health inequalities are unfair and avoidable differences in health across the population and between different groups within society.<\/p>\n

People with a learning disability are underserved in access to healthcare and experience high levels of health inequality.<\/p>\n

Research has shown that, compared with the general population, people with a learning disability were 3 to 4 times as likely to die from an avoidable medical cause of death. Most of the avoidable deaths in people with a learning disability were because timely and effective treatment was not given.<\/p>\n

Helping people to access support and care<\/h2>\n

When someone has a learning disability, it’s important that it’s recorded in their health record. This will help to ensure they receive the care and support they need.<\/p>\n

What\u00a0Mansfield Medical are doing to help<\/h3>\n

We have implemented a Learning Disability Champion, who will facilitate reasonable adjustments for our learning-disabled patients such as ensuring that when their annual health check is due. It will be booked into the first or last AM\/PM appointment, to reduce the stressors caused by waiting in the public waiting room and to avoid unnecessary delays if the GP is running behind. We also have added a message to the patients’ medical records stating “purple priority patient”. This is an initiative to identify to our reception team, that this demographic of patients should be prioritised for access to appointments and will be offered the very next appointment and whereby they may need a sooner appointment staff are to liaise with our duty Dr to assess, as LD patients are more likely to end up in hospital. We have now implemented a feedback form that will be sent to our LD patients after their annual review so their opinions and feedback can help us drive better patient care and accessibility needs, we will also have a QR code in the surgery if you would prefer to access the forms this way.<\/p>\n

Our Learning disability reviews are undertaken by our LD lead GP. They have put a lot of work into\u00a0their training in this area.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n