‘Snappy video clips’ to support service user led staff training

Highly commended for the CCA Awards category Promoting Service User Involvement in Delivering Effective Care Processes

CPA Service User Champions, who have been trained by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s Care Programme Approach / Mental Health Act team as part of our CCA award-winning course, are now using the skills that they have gained to deliver training and information to clinicians via the innovative development of snappy video clips.

To develop the 2 -3 minute clips, a careful process of preparation is undertaken to identify commonly asked questions in relation to caring for patients under the Care Programme Approach.

Sets of questions are drafted up and the appropriate response is developed as a script. During this process, service users ensure that any jargon is removed and that the script is in plain English to ensure accessibility. The group, with the support of the team, spend the day practicing the delivery of the script in a way that gets across the relevance and importance of the particular aspects of CPA that they are trying to encourage clinicians to deliver more effectively.

After rehearsal, preparation is made for filming. This is done in-house without a great deal of expense so that the whole process is owned by the CPA Champions. Once a quality video has been shot, this then goes through an editing process in which key points are emphasised and techniques for retaining the interest of the viewer are built in such as the addition of music and some special effects.

These videos were originally trialled at the Trust’s Annual General Meeting to gain feedback from clinicians, management, patients and the general public. The feedback was very positive and a number of our Directorates have included this in their annual strategic action plan as a method of promoting more effective care provision. Feedback has also encouraged service users to widen the scope of the scripts to cover relevant questions from the Mental Health Act, Mental Capacity Act and Best Practice in Managing Risk.

Since the early stages, and as the service user’s confidence has increased, a number of the Champions are now writing their own scripts. They are also identifying areas of care that they wish to promote to our clinicians so that our patients receive better outcomes throughout the Trust. The CPA service user Champions have regular contact with significant numbers of service users and the Champions themselves have either recently been patients on the ward, carers of patients, or are still receiving support within community settings. They use this experience to enhance the quality of the message they deliver through the video clips.

We believe that this exciting new development will have a significant impact on improving care within our services. This is a method for our service users and patients to directly communicate with thousands of clinicians in the field. This provides a positive message of best practice in an understandable and easy-to-access method.

http://www.nottinghamshirehealthcare.nhs.uk/