Health Checks for Adults with Learning Disabilities course for GPs

This session considers issues around introducing a service for a vulnerable patient group who have additional clinical needs, within a practice context.

This session will also assist GPs providing annual health checks as part of the Directed Enhanced Service for people with learning disability, by enabling them to acquire the knowledge and skills required.

This session was reviewed by Khyati Bakhai and last updated in March 2020.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this session you will be able to:

• Describe the rationale behind offering regular health checks to a practice population of adults with learning disabilities
• Describe how to deliver regular health checks, and what common clinical needs may be addressed as a result
• Define how to improve and refine outcomes for patient benefit

The importance of pro-active care for people with learning disabilities was highlighted by the confidential inquiry into premature deaths of people with learning disabilities. This study, which reported its findings in 2013, showed that 23% of the 247 deaths of people with learning disabilities were in those younger than 50.