The Perceived Effectiveness of Training (PET) framework: A framework for designing high quality training interventions.

BackgroundHealthcare professional training is one type of quality improvement intervention with the potential to improve patient care by changing the behaviour of the professional. There is little evidence or guidance on what constitutes effective healthcare professional training. AimTo identify factors determining effective training using an intervention to improve the management of psychological distress for primary care based healthcare professionals as an exemplar. MethodsTwo in-depth qualitative studies were conducted using semi-structured interviews. The first involved primary care professionals undertaking training and the second involved experts in training/behaviour change to explore perceptions of effective healthcare professional training. Framework analysis was used to identify core themes and iterative analyses linked themes to existing psychological theory. Results Five higher order themes that should be considered when developing high quality training were generated from inductive analysis: Social interaction, credibility, relevance, information processing and practicalities. Each of these themes feature a number of sub-themes which have been incorporated into the Perceived Effectiveness of Training (PET) framework. This framework is a theory-based tool that can be used to design effective training. A number of training intervention components, perceived to be effective in relation to each theme, were also identified. ConclusionsThis research identified determinants of effective healthcare professional training as perceived by participants and experts, with an analysis of why certain training intervention components were identified as effective. The framework can be used to guide the design of training in terms of content and delivery to help the translation of evidence into practice.