Abstract
BackgroundHealthcare professionals are key informants to support individual behaviour change, and although there has been some progress in empowering clinicians to promote physical activity and health at work, an effective strategy overarching the whole medical educational journey is still lacking. This report provides an overview from the Moving Healthcare Professionals programme (MHPP), a whole-system educational approach to embed prevention and physical activity promotion into clinical practice.MethodsThe MHPP model integrates educational resources into three core domains of medical education: undergraduate education, postgraduate education and continuing professional development. The interventions are designed to spiral through existing educational approaches rather than as additional special study modules or bolt-on courses, thus reducing self-selection bias in exposure. Interventions include spiral undergraduate education materials, e-learning, embedded post-graduate resources and face-to-face peer-to-peer education.ResultsTo date the MHPP model has been applied in two key areas, physical activity and health and work. The physical activity programme in a partnership between Public Health England and Sport England has delivered face-to-face training to 17,105 healthcare professionals, embedded materials in almost three quarters of English medical schools and overseen > 95,000 e-learning modules completed over two and half years. Evaluation of the individual elements of the model is ongoing and aims to show improvements in knowledge, skills and practice. Further evaluation is planned to assess patient impact.ConclusionsThe MHPP model offers a coherent whole-system approach to embed public health action into existing healthcare education models, and as such provides a framework for rapid change as well as upstream implementation to support the clinicians of today and tomorrow.
Highlights
Healthcare professionals are key informants to support individual behaviour change, and there has been some progress in empowering clinicians to promote physical activity and health at work, an effective strategy overarching the whole medical educational journey is still lacking
This study looks at the early implementation of the Moving Healthcare Professionals programme (MHPP) in the England and its ongoing development
The moving healthcare professional Programme (MHPP) The MHPP is based on a simplified pathway of medical education, where individuals move from undergraduate education into a period of post-graduate structured training and education, followed by ongoing continuing professional development (CPD) once working within a defined specialism
Summary
Healthcare professionals are key informants to support individual behaviour change, and there has been some progress in empowering clinicians to promote physical activity and health at work, an effective strategy overarching the whole medical educational journey is still lacking. Healthcare professionals appear to be struggling to deliver these messages, and response from patients has been mixed [3] Both adult and older patients often feel they are not receiving physical activity. Research has shown that primary healthcare professionals such as GPs already frequently discuss physical activity with their patients, this advice is typically brief, non-specific and fails to capitalise on the opportunity to change patients’ behaviour and engagement with a more active lifestyle [6]. Among other healthcare professionals such as physiotherapists, research has shown some improvement in their understanding of physical activity counselling [13], but there is still generalised poor understanding [14] and wide-spread unawareness about the current physical activity recommendations [15]
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