Improving Follow-Up and Continuity of Care Protocols Through Staff Education in an Outpatient Mental Health Clinic

In this DNP staff education project, I aimed to solve two main issues which disrupted patient treatment continuity: better documentation and follow-up care practices. The existing gaps in knowledge have led to missing scheduled appointments, missing medical information, and weak communication between hospital staff and clinic staff resulting in disorganized patient care. The main goal of the project was to improve staff understanding of post treatment procedures, maintenance systems, and medical recordkeeping requirements. Ten clinical staff members participated in education. Pre- and post-knowledge assessments were used to evaluate knowledge change. The normalized learning gain formula served to measure the extent of learning. The participants achieved improvements in their post test results which spanned from 80% to 100% and resulted in an average learning gain of 91.3% among all participants. The staff members who started with the lowest scores achieved the most significant improvement in their results indicating the education program successfully improved their basic knowledge deficiencies which supported the education model in delivering effective results. The project findings suggest that outpatient mental health clinics should implement standard staff education programs to support employee competency in understanding post-treatment procedures, maintenance systems, and medical recordkeeping requirements. The ongoing implementation of this education may lead to better medical record keeping, better patient follow-up and improved healthcare continuity ultimately supporting the improvement needed in social change.