High Speed Training Alternative for Hospital Staff
A certificate course proves you covered the subject. It does not teach you how the ward works. Here is what to use alongside it, and when each one fits.
If you are looking for a High Speed Training alternative, it is probably because the certificate course got you through the door and then the ward turned out to be a different thing. That is normal. High Speed Training is a good way to earn a certificate in a subject. It was never built to show you what happens at the triage desk or in the ambulance bay. HospitalUp is built for that, five minutes at a time. This page explains what each one does, side by side, so you can pick the right one or use both.
What High Speed Training offers
High Speed Training sells online courses for health and social care, for people starting in the sector and for experienced practitioners. The list on its health and social care page includes the Care Certificate, safeguarding adults at several levels, basic life support, medication training for care, infection prevention and control, moving and handling people, needles and sharps, dementia awareness and CPR awareness.
You take a course on any device, at any time of day, at a pace that suits you. You can stop partway and come back later. When you finish, you get an electronic certificate the same day, and a printed copy follows by post. The site says the courses are accredited by the CPD Certification Service, with some listed with RoSPA and some carrying City and Guilds branding. Teams and organisations can buy in bulk.
The outcome is clear: a recognised document that says you have covered the subject. For a job application, an agency file or a CPD record, that is exactly what you need. We have no quarrel with it.
What a certificate course does not teach about your ward
A certificate course teaches a subject. A shift is not a subject. Here is where the gap shows.
- It tends to be taken once. You pass, you print the certificate, you move on. By the following month most of the detail has gone, because nothing asked you to use it.
- It covers health and social care as a whole. A course is not written around one setting such as a hospital corridor, a side room or an emergency department waiting area.
- It is organised by topic, not by situation. Infection prevention is a chapter. On the ward it is the isolation sign on the door of bay four, the commode that needs cleaning between two patients, and the colleague who went from one bed to the next without using the gel.
- It is a course, not a moment. You can stop and resume, but a hospital shift gives you a handover, a break if you are lucky, and a bus ride home. Five minutes fits that more easily.
- It is organised by subject, not by hospital role. A porter, a housekeeper, a ward clerk and a healthcare assistant look for different things in the same topic.
Say a new porter, call him Kofi, starts in the emergency department on Monday with fresh certificates in moving and handling and infection prevention. In his first hour a nurse says: "Take this one from majors to CT. If resus calls, go there first." Kofi does not know what majors or resus are. He does not know why the patient who arrived last is going before the one who has waited two hours, or why the ambulance crew in the bay keep looking at the clock. Nothing in his certificate courses was wrong. They were about other subjects, not about triage, streams or flow. Kofi learns it from a colleague on the move, if the colleague has time that day.
What HospitalUp does instead
HospitalUp is a training app for hospital staff of every role. Each lesson is five minutes long and starts from one situation on a ward or in a department: the patient on the floor, the isolation door, the relative who is angry at the desk, the emergency department on a Saturday night. The lesson shows the standard, the common mistake and the recovery, with the words and steps to use.
Lessons are grouped into tracks, and tracks into paths. You do them on your phone, between shifts or on the bus. The English is plain, and every term is explained in one sentence the first time it appears. Readers with English as a second language were in mind from the start.
You can repeat a lesson the week before you move wards, or the morning after something went wrong. HospitalUp does not replace the training your employer requires, and it does not issue a certificate for your file. It sits beside your mandatory training and makes the learning hold.
Back to Kofi. The track How the Emergency Department Works covers why the sickest go first, what resus, majors, minors and the waiting area are, why every delay backs up the ambulance bay, what porters, cleaners, clerks and security do in the department, and how to keep yourself safe when it is busy. He can work through it in his breaks. By Friday he knows why the nurse said what she said.
Side by side
| High Speed Training | HospitalUp | |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Online course with a certificate | Five-minute lessons grouped in tracks |
| Device | Any device | Your phone |
| Who it speaks to | Health and social care, starters and experienced practitioners | Hospital roles only, in ward situations |
| What you get | A certificate | A skill you have practised and can repeat |
| Price model | Pay per course, with bulk purchasing for teams | Subscription for one person or a team |
| Replaces employer training | No | No |
Who should pick which
Pick High Speed Training when you need a named certificate for a job application, an agency file or a CPD record, when your employer asks for a specific course, or when you want a full grounding in one subject before you start.
Pick HospitalUp when you already hold the certificate and still feel lost on the ward, when you lead a team of new starters, bank or agency staff and want them useful within a week, when English is not your first language, or when you want something you can return to on the day you need it.
Many people use both: the course for the document, the app for the shift. If your starting point is the induction standard rather than a course, read our page on a Care Certificate alternative for hospital staff. If your employer sends you to the national elearning portal, there is a page on using elearning for healthcare on your phone too. And for the subject most certificate buyers come for, our guide to infection control basics for every hospital role shows what the five-minute version looks like.
Questions people ask
Does HospitalUp give me a certificate?
No. HospitalUp is not a certificate course and does not issue a document for your file. If you need a certificate, a course provider such as High Speed Training is the right place for it.
Can I use HospitalUp instead of my mandatory training?
No. Your employer decides which training is mandatory and where you do it, and that does not change. HospitalUp is for the part that mandatory training cannot do: practising the real situations, in short sessions, as often as you need.
Is it only for nurses and healthcare assistants?
No. The lessons are written for porters and housekeeping, reception and ward clerks, nurses, and anyone in charge of a shift. The emergency department track, for example, has a whole lesson on what porters, cleaners, clerks and security do in the department.
Is it a good fit if English is my second language?
Yes, and that was a design goal. Sentences are short, each lesson covers one idea, and every hospital term is explained the first time it appears.
Learn this in five minutes
The track How the Emergency Department Works takes you through triage, streams and zones, flow, the supporting roles and keeping yourself safe, one five-minute lesson each. Practise it before your first shift in the department, and again the day you move there.