Development of a recovery education program for inpatient mental health providers

Mental health system transformation toward a recovery-orientation has created a demand for education to equip providers with recovery competencies. This report describes the development of a recovery education program designed specifically for inpatient providers.

Part 1 of the education is a self-learning program introducing recovery concepts and a recovery competency framework; Part 2 is a group-learning program focusing on real-life dilemmas and applying the Appreciative Inquiry approach to address these clinical dilemmas. A pilot study with a pretest/posttest design was used to evaluate the program. Participants included 26 inpatient multidisciplinary providers from 3 hospitals.

The results showed participants' improvement on recovery knowledge (z = -2.55, p = .011) after the self-learning program. Evaluations of the group-learning program were high (4.21 out of 5).

These results support continued efforts to refine the program. Inpatient providers could use this program to lead interprofessional practice in promoting recovery.