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Changes to eating and physical activity patterns
Preventing child tooth decay
Supporting individuals to stop smoking
Reducing alcohol intake
Changing their health care regimes
Undergraduate and postgraduate medical education
Midwife training
GP training
Paediatric obesity service training
Dental care practice
Mental health trust as part of their ‘Making Every Contact Count’ public health training
Education professionals discussing child weight in primary schools
Why?
Medical schools are expected to equip graduating students with skills to be able to help patients to change health-related behaviours but this is challenging, and medical education often doesn’t involve theory-based or evidence-based education on this topic.
What?
A 1-day training course was delivered by GPs to 4th and 5th year medical students. It gave students the chance to learn about what we know works and what doesn’t work when trying to support people to make behavioural changes, and to practice using the TENTPEGS techniques and get feedback on their performance.
Take home messages?
Following training medical students’ reported increased confidence and intentions to discuss obesity with patients; and felt the training was useful and well delivered. GPs delivering the training also told us that they found the TENTPEGS toolkit useful for their own practice.
Why?
MECC is a public health strategy to encourage behaviour change conversations between health professionals and patients. The TENTPEGS provides training for health professionals in order to meet the criteria for Level 2 training competencies set by MECC.
What?
Training is delivered to health professionals via a 45-minute online module. This has been evaluated amongst staff within a Northwest NHS Trust as part of their Level 2 MECC training. A sample of nearly 500 staff engaged with the training. Following training they reported higher confidence and motivation to have conversations with patients.
Take home messages?
This online TENTPEGS training will be evaluated with a view to identifying how this training may change health professional practice and a range of patient outcomes.
Why?
Primary school staff of all disciplines (e.g. teaching staff, nursing staff, support staff) are increasingly required to have conversations with parents about child weight. These conversations can be challenging and difficult to navigate.
What?
We have worked with primary schools to understand the core challenges in this area, completed a systematic review of education professional experiences, qualitative interviews to identify core challenges and best practice.
Next steps?
We will be developing bespoke TENTPEGS training for primary school professionals, please get in touch with our team to find out more.
Why?
Dental professionals are increasing required to discuss prevention with patients, particularly to prevent child tooth decay. This requires conversations with families around making changes to dietary patterns and tooth hygiene. Behaviour change is core to both these topics.
What?
TENTPEGS has been used to support dentists in these routine conversations. Training has been developed to provide on line and face to face support to dental trainees and professionals on these topics. Please see the Toothpicks page for further information on this project.
Next steps?
This work is continuing to be developed and evaluated across a range of dental settings.