Background

Bitesized Teaching is an initiative that has worked successfully in Yorkshire and Derbyshire Mental Health Services for the last 4 years. It involves the delivery of high impact, 10 minute tutorials on physical health topics, which take place once a week in the ward lunchtime handover period. This means that staff do not have to leave the ward to attend a teaching session and that with both the incoming staff and outgoing staff at the ward handover, tutorial attendance is optimised.

The tutorials are aimed at meeting the needs of Nursing Staff and Healthcare Assistants and are delivered by Junior Doctors once a week. It has already proven to be an effective and efficient way of enhancing knowledge of common physical problems in mental health settings in the Yorkshire and Derbyshire locality. With the support of Health Education England, it is now an initiative which has been rolled out to the rest of the country.

Understanding physical health in the context of mental health care represents a unique set of challenges. There can often be barriers between physical and mental healthcare which can detract from satisfactory healthcare delivery, particularly for patients with severe mental illness. Whilst most Trust’s have protocols regarding physical health monitoring for patients with serious mental illness, there are still gaps in knowledge regarding physical health complaints outside of this framework. Bitesized Teaching has been designed with this specific need in mind.