The outcomes of an intervention study to reduce the barriers experienced by people with intellectual disabilities accessing primary health care services.
A short live workshop plus a handout beats the handout alone for teaching ID-specific care.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team gave primary-care staff three ways to learn about patients with intellectual disabilities. One group got a written pack only. One got the pack plus a three-hour face-to-face workshop. One got nothing.
Staff took tests before and after to check knowledge and confidence.
What they found
The pack-plus-workshop group scored higher on both tests. The pack-only group barely beat the no-training group.
Three extra hours of live practice and discussion made the difference.
How this fits with other research
Lattal (2004) showed that quick verbal feedback during sessions also lifts trainer skill. The 2006 study adds that a short workshop can do the same before care starts.
Reid et al. (2005) kept gains for 14 weeks by using ongoing data-driven supervision. The 2006 study did not track long-term change, so we do not know if the boost lasts without follow-up.
Ferreri et al. (2011) found that routine health checks uncover missed needs in patients with ID. Training staff, as Eisenhower et al. (2006) did, helps those checks happen in the first place.
Why it matters
If you run in-service training, pair any handout with a live mini-workshop. Three hours is enough to lift knowledge and confidence. Add brief feedback later to keep the skills strong.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: People with intellectual disabilities (IDs) experience significant health inequalities compared with the general population. The barriers people with IDs experience in accessing services contribute to these health inequalities. Professionals' significant unmet training needs are an important barrier to people with IDs accessing appropriate services to meet their health needs. METHOD: A three group, pre- and post-intervention design was used to test the hypothesis that a training intervention for primary health care professionals would increase the knowledge and self-efficacy of participants. The intervention had two components - a written training pack and a 3-hour face-to-face training event. One group received the training pack and attended the training event, a second group received the training pack only, and a third group did not participate in the training intervention. Research measures were taken prior to the intervention and 3 months after the intervention. Statistical comparisons were made between the three groups. RESULTS: The participants in the training intervention reported that it had a positive impact upon their knowledge, skills and clinical practice. As a result of the intervention, 35 (81.4%) respondents agreed that they were more able to meet the needs of their clients with IDs, and 33 (66.6%) reported that they had made changes to their clinical practice. The research demonstrated that the intervention produced a statistically significant increase in the knowledge of participants (F = 5.6, P = 0.005), compared with the group that did not participate in the intervention. The self-efficacy of the participants that received both components of the intervention was significantly greater than the group that did not participate in the training (t = 2.079, P = 0.04). Participation in the two components of the training intervention was associated with significantly greater change in knowledge and self-efficacy than those receiving the training pack alone. CONCLUSION: This intervention was effective in addressing the measured training needs of primary health care professionals. Future research should directly evaluate the positive benefits of interventions on the lives of people with IDs.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2006 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2005.00719.x