Introduction Kensington and Chelsea Home Treatment Team is a multidisciplinary team in a mental health trust. It is comprised of skilled staff providing high intensity support to acutely unwell patients in the community as an alternative to hospital admission.

During staff supervision sessions, team meetings and handovers, senior staff and team members identified lack of confidence amongst staff in key areas of work

There were different barriers identified

1. Minimal engagement in Continuous Professional Development (CPD) from team

2. Not all relevant subjects can be covered in staff induction/mandatory training

3. Busy clinical work with no protected teaching time

4. There was no ongoing teaching program within the team

Aims and objectives of the research project or activity Primary Aim - Improve staff confidence in knowledge and skills in delivering care for patients with serious mental illness (SMI)

Measurement- Change in reported confidence in pre and post training questionnaire

Secondary aim – to develop an ongoing training programme which will run every fortnight improving staff involvement in CPD

Method or approach Service user representative was involved from the beginning

A Questionnaire was developed to know staff’s views on teaching program and choice of teaching subjects.

Teaching sessions were hybrid, fortnightly and 30 minutes long as suggested by staff

Expert speakers were chosen from across the Trust

Participants rated confidence pre and post training on a Likert scale

Qualitative data informed further teaching subjects, and to gain more detailed feedback to feed into PDSA cycles

Further PDSA cycles focused on refining the format and timing of the teaching to improve participant satisfaction and impact

Sustainability was ensured by involving band 7 nurses in the team were involved along with trainee doctors

Service user Involvement- Big I

From the beginning there was service user/carer involvement, service user representative was a true partner and a key member the QI team from the start. This focused the project on patient care, influenced choice of teaching sessions from service user perspective and was a vital catalyst to the cohesiveness and enthusiasm of the group

Findings A variety of different sessions were delivered by a diverse range of professionals.

The results demonstrated a significant increase in confidence for participants in key subject areas following a bitesize teaching. This was measured by giving participants a pre and post teaching questionnaire where they rated confidence in the subject on a 5-point Likert scale (1- not confident at all, to 5- extremely confident)

There was an average of 41% increase in confidence after a teaching sessions - the upper confidence level was 114%Across all data points,

There was a good qualitative feedback about the training sessions

Currently, team is engaging well in fortnightly teaching sessions

Key messages Introducing a ‘bitesize’ teaching programme is a feasible and effective way of increasing confidence in key subject areas and improving staff’s engagement in CPD

Early involvement of service user representation in QI projects is invaluable

The importance of involving team seniors to support protected teaching time was highlighted

Thinking about sustainability from the start of project is important - our sessions are being recorded to access on a shared drive, the whole MDT is involved in delivering the teaching, and we are sharing our learning with other teams in the trust to inspire them to develop similar programmes.