Team training is always challenging - finding time, arriving late, preparing topics. Our team is across three sites, so travel becomes an added problem and technology creates hurdles. In addition, many pelvic health professionals work in isolation or small teams. A new approach to comprehensive training is required! We developed a training day that includes core staff, staff who work closely with us and pelvic health clinicians outside the Trust. Feedback has been extremely positive and there is a small income-generation stream too. This is a highly transferable model, and can be adapted to any size team.

The bladder, bowel and pelvic health team in one NHS Trust consists of eleven nurses and physiotherapists. The team started to develop extended training sessions to overcome the travel and time obstacles. This started as a half day and grew organically to become four full day sessions per year. We have a well thought out programme of talks, case studies, product demonstrations, course and conference reviews, clinical and guideline updates and sponsored lunches. We tackle professional portfolio issues, and have guest speakers. We had a series of talks by the Trust librarian and now hold a regular journal club as part of the day. We are delighted to welcome other pelvic health clinicians from our Trust to develop an extended team and we also include pelvic health nurses and physiotherapists who work elsewhere and struggle to access affordable and convenient training. They either contribute a talk, or pay a fee of £10. All money raised goes towards the team library and training resources, which everyone can benefit from. The whole team take turns with planning, proposing topics, organising, speaking and running the day. It is a fantastic platform for practising presentation skills and gaining confidence in teaching. Alongside traditional topics such as details of conditions and treatment approaches, we have included statistical analysis, library searches, safeguarding theory and case studies and practical skills such as bladder scanning.

A simple questionnaire was devised on a free website, to request anonymised feedback from the training day participants. This has now been run for two of the most recent days and analysed by one of the participants. The results have been used to amend the structure and content of the day and each day will be assessed in the same way going forwards.

The last questionnaire of 11 participants had the following results:
80% rated the day as excellent, and 20% as good
80% rated the content as completely relevant to their work, and 20% as mostly relevant
There was feedback on the top sessions and on topics that would be good to have at future events
100% found the number of sessions, and the length of the sessions, to be just right

The plan is to continue running the questionnaire after every training day, and making adjustments as the delegates require. We have had another five people external to the Trust ask to attend, and going forwards it is possible that this may develop into a much larger event. The training days have been shown to be successful and popular, and there is a high level of demand for training within pelvic health that is accessible and affordable. The number of people working in relative isolation in nursing and physiotherapy is also significant and the networking opportunities that these training days offer is also of benefit to all involved.

A high quality and effective service requires motivated, highly trained and supported staff. The training days are one aspect to providing this and the model we have used is scalable and transferable to other staff groups, Trusts and institutions.