An Oxford Health team has been awarded the 2021 Denis O’Leary medical educator award for the Personality Disorder Positive Outcome Programme (PDPOP), a personality disorder training programme for general practice teams.

The award, made by the Oxford Centre for Medical Education, recognises excellence in medical/clinical education with an emphasis on patient-centeredness.

The PDPOP programme drew on the experience of two Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust services – Complex Needs and Luther Street Medical Practice, which provides services for the homeless – and was developed by a team including trainers with lived experience of personality disorder. The winning team, pictured above, are Dr Rob Schafer from Luther Street and trainers Fiona Blyth, Linda Thomson and Fiona Jobson.

GP practices taking part in the PDPOP programme receive comprehensive whole team training and facilitation to help transform their skill and confidence when working with their most complex and vulnerable patients, some of whom can present in ways that are challenging for healthcare staff.

The awarding panel said:

“We were impressed by the creativity and commitment to improving patient care and inter-professional collaboration and feel that the project demonstrates the very best practice in integrating education and clinical practice.  The development and implementation of this initiative during the pandemic is even more impressive.”

The PDPOP programme director GP Dr Rob Schafer said:

“We believe that training GP teams in this way will help patients with personality disorder receive better physical and mental healthcare and could reduce the frequent consulting and less appropriate prescribing that can be associated with personality disorder.”

The programme recently received certification from the Royal College of General Practitioners and was presented at the regional Society of Academic Primary Care conference.

Seventeen practices so far have taken part in the programme which is funded by Health Education England until September 2021. The team is preparing bids which, if successful, would allow all practices in the Thames Valley to benefit from training. They are also actively looking for research partners to provide a deeper analysis of the effects of training on the patient and staff outcomes.