Core 6 Physical Health Checks

The KHP Mind & Body team has helped develop training and education around the annual physical health checks for adults with serious mental illness.

In this blog Reanne Parkash, Assistant Project Manager for the KHP Mind & Body Programme, describes the Core 6 project and how it’s being implemented.

Physical health interventions

Continuing the learning from the Integrating our Mental and Physical Healthcare Systems (IMPHS) project legacy, in summer 2023, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (NHS FT) launched its first Community of Practice (CoP) focused on physical health interventions for adults with serious mental illness (SMI).

The CoP was delivered between June and August 2023 and included 30 different members of staff from varying roles and backgrounds across the trust. The main aims of the CoP were to co-develop action plans for training and education around the annual Core 6 physical health checks - body mass index (BMI), blood pressure and pulse, alcohol, smoking, blood lipids and QRisk score, and HbA1c - for adults with SMI, and the communications and engagement of that within the Trust.

“Adults living with a serious mental illness (SMI) are five times more likely to die prematurely than the general population due to preventable physical health problems”

One output from the CoP was the implementation of a trust-wide physical health roadshow: an opportunity to engage with a diverse range of staff working in adult mental health teams across the Trust to promote the Core 6 physical health checks and understand how staff feel when completing them.

To put this into action, across a four-week period in October 2023, the Trust’s Physical Health team and King’s Health Partners Mind & Body team successfully visited 34 adult mental health teams across all four Trust directorates. During this time, the team were able to speak with 78 members of staff from various adult mental health teams about the Core 6 physical health checks.

“This has been very motivating and a great reminder of why we must work with people holistically to enhance their quality of life” – Occupational Therapist, Southwark

As part of the roadshows, staff were able to practice conducting physical health checks and learn about newly developed resources to support staff confidence and competence when completing these vital annual checks with SMI patients.

Thank you to all staff who attended the roadshows and provided insightful feedback and ideas around how we can continue to improve the physical healthcare of people using services at the Trust.

To learn more about the physical health roadshows, or the Core 6 physical health checks, please get in touch with us at: mindandbody@slam.nhs.uk

To learn more about the KHP Mind & Body Programme, visit the team’s webpages here.