Training of care managers
The GILL eHealth intervention will be conducted by trained coordinating nurses, who will perform the role of ‘care manager’ for physical health and lifestyle. Two nurses of each team in the experimental condition will receive a one-day training focused on the theoretical background of physical health care and lifestyle promotion for clients with SMI. Most of the training time is spent on practical skills for the effective provision of the screening and lifestyle intervention to the client. Special attention is paid to motivational skills, promoting clients’ commitment to the intervention, and realising their optimal use of self-management skills. Since these nurses will act as care managers, they will be trained in how to involve the client’s social network and how they can assist in supporting clients to improve their physical health. Two eLearning modules need to be completed before participating in the training.During the one-year follow-up period feedback sessions will be organised every three months for the nurses in the experimental condition. These sessions will be supervised by the expert trainer, focusing on barriers and successes during the implementation of the intervention. The sessions aim at learning from each other. This also provides the opportunity to detect possible bottlenecks during the implementation process, for example related to personal or organisational factors that hinder execution of the intervention. The training will be given by an experienced trainer in physical health and lifestyle promotion in mental health care. The trained nurses can function as role models within their team and disseminate their gained knowledge to other team members. Besides the structured training and feedback meetings, nurses can always contact the training staff to discuss any questions or problems that may arise.