1. Teaching psychiatry to large groups in society
- Author
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Eva Bejerot, Ann Lindgren, Marie Elwin, Jörgen Rosén, and Susanne Bejerot
- Subjects
medicine.medical_specialty ,020205 medical informatics ,Patient-centered care ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Health Personnel ,Intellectual disability ,lcsh:Medicine ,Empathy ,02 engineering and technology ,Education ,Likert scale ,Social support ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Professional Competence ,0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering ,medicine ,Humans ,Generalizability theory ,Quality (business) ,030212 general & internal medicine ,Psychiatry ,media_common ,Quality of Health Care ,Sweden ,lcsh:LC8-6691 ,Medical education ,lcsh:Special aspects of education ,Pedagogy ,lcsh:R ,Professional development ,Pedagogik ,General Medicine ,Nidotherapy ,medicine.disease ,Quality Improvement ,Staff development ,Mental disorder ,Health education ,Mental health services ,Health Services Research ,Psychology ,Research Article ,Program Evaluation - Abstract
Background There is a need to educate a range of professionals in caring for individuals with long-term mental disability who reside within our communities. Empathy alone is insufficient. The Kognus 4-Step Education Program was developed to achieve this goal. Method The program consisted of independent courses, including an 18-session basic course on psychiatric disability (on-site or online), advanced courses, and highly specialized training programs (Nidotherapy/Peer Consultation). Experts lectured together with clients with psychiatric disabilities. We first report Swedish reforms in which institutionalized patients were relocated to semi-independent individual households. We then describe the design and implementation of the education program. Approximately 50% of participants who were younger than 36 years old lacked any healthcare education. The participants’ backgrounds, perceptions, participation in the education program, and costs are presented. Results Between 2009 and 2014, 8959 participants attended the Kognus psychiatry courses online or on-site in Stockholm (basic on-site course, n = 2111; online course, n = 4480; advanced courses, n = 2322; highly specialized programs, n = 46). A total of 73% of the participants satisfactorily attended the basic sessions on-site compared with 11% of the online participants. The developers conducted the education program for the first 3 years. Thereafter, another course provider continued the program with other types of participants. The program was perceived to be equally interesting and meaningful to participants with low and high levels of education, demonstrating the generalizability of the program. The quality of the basic and advanced courses was rated as 4.4 and 4.3, respectively, on a 5-point Likert scale. Conclusions Personnel without appropriate education who work with people with psychiatric/intellectual disabilities can be educated in large numbers. The Kognus program represents a novel and successful way of training people who have no formal education about some essentials of good mental healthcare. Moreover, the model can be easily implemented elsewhere. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-019-1596-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
- Published
- 2019