Three CareMalta employees – Edel Borg Mizzi, Renata Zahra and Yasmine Seguna – have successfully completed the Higher Diploma in Gerontology and Geriatrics (HDGG) at the University of Malta.
Borg Mizzi and Zahra are lead care assistants at CareMalta’s homes for the elderly at Żejtun and Villa Messina, Rabat, respectively, while Seguna is an active ageing coordinator at Casa Arkati, Mosta.
Borg Mizzi has been employed with CareMalta since 2003. Her first role was that of a care assistant at Casa Arkati. After seven years, she became a senior care assistant at Roseville Home, Attard, and was later a lead care assistant at Żejtun Home and Roseville. She has been in her current role since 2012.
Zahra came to Malta as an Erasmus nursing student 11 years ago. In 2012, she joined CareMalta as a care assistant at Zammit Clapp Hospital Residential Home and was promoted to lead care assistant at Villa Messina in 2017. She is responsible for all care-related activities at the home, ensuring residents enjoy personal independence and quality care based on a person-centred approach.
The course is in many ways a logical and essential response to demographic trends
Seguna has been working at CareMalta since 2013, her first role being that of a care assistant and phlebotomist at the Żejtun home. After further training, she continued developing her career and was promoted to active ageing coordinator.
All three women took part in CareMalta’s 24/7 lockdown initiative at all its elderly homes from March 16 to May 24.
The HDGG, a National Qualifications Framework Level 5 course run by the University’s Faculty for Social Wellbeing, is in many ways a logical and essential response to the demographic trends currently being faced all over the world, including Malta: both the ageing of the population and the growth in life expectancy.
The higher diploma focuses on the social, psychological, economic and biological processes of ageing and later life. It provides a broadly-based, multi-disciplinary perspective on ageing, later life and elderly people. It offers not only academic knowledge but also training in skills related to clinical and practical interventions with older adults. The course also sensitises students to the application of gerontological and geriatric research findings to practice.
The course enables students to acquire transferable skills that can help them enter ageing-related occupations or advance in their careers in this area. It is especially aimed at people already working with the elderly and in the field of ageing, those who wish to work with older people and others who wish to start their studies in the field of gerontology and geriatrics.
For more information, visit the websites below.
www.um.edu.mt/courses/overview/UHDGEGFT-2020-1-O