Posted on: 8 May 2024
The Kensington and Chelsea Home Treatment Team (HTT) is a team of professionals who provide intensive support to patients in the community.
Senior staff and team members identified a lack of confidence in certain key areas of their work during their regular supervision sessions, team meetings, and handovers.
They discovered that there were several barriers hindering their professional development. This included: minimal engagement in continuous professional development, limited coverage of relevant subjects in staff induction and mandatory training, busy clinical work with no protected teaching time, and no ongoing teaching programme within the team.
In order to address these areas, they developed a programme to build up the team’s skillset and improve the standard of patient care through a 'bitesize' teaching programme. The initiative considered the needs of patients and involved service user representatives from the start. The team worked to improve the quality of patient care by building confidence levels of the team members – specifically, around knowledge and skills when delivering care for patients with serious mental illness (SMI).
The team addressed knowledge gaps through concise teaching sessions and promoted a culture of continuous learning and improvement. The success of the project was measured through a questionnaire (using a scale that measures opinions, attitudes or behaviours) which assessed the change in reported confidence levels before and after training.
Qualitative feedback from the team members was collected to refine future teaching topics, ensuring they were aligned with immediate needs. Cycles of Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) were also used to improve teaching formats and timing.
Hybrid teaching sessions were conducted fortnightly, lasting for 30 minutes each, with expert guest speakers invited from within the Trust. The 'bitesize' teaching initiative successfully increased confidence levels across key subject areas.
Post-teaching assessments revealed an average 41% surge in confidence. This improvement emphasised the programme’s value in equipping team members with skills and knowledge to excel in their roles.
The project highlighted several invaluable lessons for the future. Early engagement with service user representatives was pivotal, highlighting the importance of patient partnership in quality improvement initiatives. Dedicated teaching time, supported by team seniors, was crucial in fostering professional development. Sustainability measures, such as session recordings for accessibility and knowledge-sharing initiatives, were prioritised to ensure the impact of the initiative had a lasting effect.
Largely as a result of this initiative, the HTT have achieved full Quality Network for Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Team accreditation from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. You can read more here.
The team have summarised and presented the results in this poster.