Dealing With Out of Hours Emergencies - A film Project

Abstract

Aims

The aim of the project is to support new psychiatric trainees identify common and serious physical health issues on psychiatric wards out of hours; along with the appropriate management and escalation.

Methods

The project began in March 2021, supporting our Medical Education Team with a film project to be shown at induction. Doctors coming to psychiatry jobs come from many different clinical roles. Feedback was received that trainees were unhappy managing medical emergencies in psychiatric hospitals. Most new trainees don't necessarily have knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of care on a psychiatric ward.

A survey completed from two trainee rotations regarding the most common physical health issues they encountered and the challenges they faced was used to narrow down to 3 film scenarios, incorporating a comprehensive list of clinical cases that could be encountered on call. We included physical health and mental health emergencies, use of MHA & capacity assessments. We worked with a production company producing scripts and expanded on the scenarios with the help of medical and nursing staff to ensure the scenarios remain relevant, and as realistic as possible to existing trainees. The final stage of the project was November 2021 which involved filming with the production company and professional actors who brought our concept to life. Post-production, we presented them during trust academic program to launch the videos in mid-2022.

Results

The videos were received positively and quantitative scores completed by a questionnaire before and after showing the videos showed an improvement in confidence in assessing, managing and treating patient with physical health issues and those with physical health complications of their mental health in a psychiatric hospital from 39% to 88% (response rate 62/90).

Conclusion/recommendations

We are proud to report that these videos are now being used during every junior doctor induction and can be referred to if a refresher on that topic is required later.

We are excited about this innovative method of training using high-quality videos to ensure trainee engagement. We hope it will form a baseline for further discussions and teaching around the topics derived from the scenarios. The videos were designed to last many years and so we hope will be of benefit to current and future trainees of all levels. This successful project will be expanded further and we are in the process of developing other scenarios that can be used for training.