Community practitioner : the journal of the Community Practitioners' & Health Visitors' Association
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Childhood obesity has reached epidemic levels, yet many health professionals lack confidence in working with parents around lifestyle change. HENRY (Health Exercise Nutrition for the Really Young) aims to tackle this through training practitioners to work more effectively with parents of preschoolers around obesity and lifestyle issues. We evaluated the long-term impact of HENRY training on health professionals' knowledge, skills and confidence in tackling obesity prevention. ⋯ Effects on respondents' personal lives were also reported: 61% applied the knowledge and skills at home, identifying for example, more shared family mealtimes and reduced portion sizes. The impact endures, with 71% of those undergoing training > 12 months ago, stating that they continued to use concepts in their professional lives. The findings suggest that brief training can have a sustained impact on practitioners' professional and personal lives.
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The UK government is committed to the introduction of electronic health records and has announced an intention for a 'paper-free' NHS by 2018. This has particular implications for the specialist community public health nurse (SCPHN) workforce, mainly due to staff members' general lack of experience with information technology (IT). There are further potential issues arising from the use of skill mix staff within teams and their role in record keeping and governance. ⋯ To support a transition from paper to electronic health records, it is essential to view resistance as a predictable phenomenon and to learn from other areas that have already introduced electronic records successfully. It is recommended that the workforce's IT skills and learning styles are assessed before the development of training programmes for electronic records. This information can then be used to establish the appropriate educational approach.