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. 2019 Mar 15;19(1):84.
doi: 10.1186/s12909-019-1517-y.

Moving healthcare professionals - a whole system approach to embed physical activity in clinical practice

Michael Brannan  1 , Matteo Bernardotto  2 , Nick Clarke  1 , Justin Varney  3
Affiliations

Moving healthcare professionals - a whole system approach to embed physical activity in clinical practice

Michael Brannan et al. BMC Med Educ. .

Abstract

Background: Healthcare 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.

Methods: The 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.

Results: To 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.

Conclusions: The 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.

Keywords: Medical education; Physical activity; Whole system approach; eLearning.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The MHPP was approved by Public Health England Research Ethics Committee (PHE REC). The data presented in this manuscript was collected after obtaining informed written consent from all participants that completed eLearning modules and/or face-to-face training as part of the MHPP.

Competing interests

The authors declare they have no financial competing interests. JV conceptualised the MHPP programme and all three authors have been involved in the delivery of the programme.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
“Moving Professionals – The model”. Cog diagram showing the overview of the MHPP
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
“Timeline”. MHPP development timeline
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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