Pilot of a Training Format for Clinicians' Continuing Professional Development: Open House With Rotating Short...

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Healthcare Training
• Clinical Practice Improvement

Background:

• Hospital staff scheduling presents a barrier to accessing traditional lunchtime continuing professional development (CPD).
• Traditional CPD formats often conflict with varied staff lunch breaks, limiting participation and knowledge dissemination.
• Effective training is crucial for ensuring clinicians consistently provide essential patient information.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a flexible, adaptable training format for continuing professional development in hospital settings.
• To overcome scheduling barriers and improve clinician engagement in voluntary training.
• To assess the impact of a novel training format on clinicians' intent to provide rights advice to involuntary patients.

Main Methods:

• A three-part training module (focus group, didactic, Q&A) was developed, with each segment lasting 15 minutes.
• The segments were rotated over 3 hours, allowing participants to join at any time and complete the curriculum in 45 minutes.
• The training was piloted five times across three hospitals, with 80 participants completing the Continuing Professional Development Reaction questionnaire.

Main Results:

• The training format demonstrated a detectable increase in clinicians' intent to consistently inform involuntary patients about their Mental Health Act rights.
• Participants reported the training as organized, informative, and valuable, indicating positive reception.
• The flexible, "open house" style training was found to be feasible and adaptable for engaging clinicians.

Conclusions:

• The rotating, segment-based training model effectively addresses scheduling limitations in hospital CPD.
• This adaptable format enhances clinician engagement and knowledge transfer for crucial practice behaviors.
• The study highlights a viable strategy for improving ongoing professional development delivery in healthcare settings.