Training medical staff: Best Practices
The importance of training in the medical sector presents an opportunity to expand the knowledge bank of the employees. Training in the healthcare field is directly involved in the process of saving people’s life and health and hence, holds immense importance.
It is essential for the members of the staff who work day and night in the health care sector. It is to sharpen their skills, making them more efficient and productive. It also improves the care we want our patients to receive. Training the staff across all aspects makes them aware of their roles and responsibilities clearly. Motivating them to work diligently. Yes, the process can be heavy on the pocket but it’s truly worth it. It also helps in boosting their morale and overall satisfaction thereby reducing the turnover too.
Hospitals can register themselves with Healthstream Learning Centre LMS to give them the responsibility to create, organise and train the workforce in order to improve patient satisfaction.
According to healthcare practices, training the medical staff can reduce medical errors by 18% and also increases patient satisfaction by 13%
Let’s look at some effective techniques and practices for training medical staff:
1.Emphasise on individual learning style and align them with existing responsibilities
Every individual has a different pattern while studying. Some grasp faster when lessons are explained in verbal form, some learn better when they are a part of a discussion group. Hence, a survey should be conducted to ascertain the individual style of learning.
Also, the training should be done in dead hours especially for those who are responsible for critical jobs at the hospital. The training should not interfere with the working at all.
2.To seek help of professional training programmes
Any practitioner or staff undergoes many training programs while they are learning but not all demonstrate useful results while performing. Hence, the goal is to minimise that gap to enhance the quality. To do that there are many educational and professional programmes. They cater to the specific training needs of the staff and provide them with adequate knowledge needed for proper patient care. One such training module is HealthStream Learning Centre’s classroom tools. It is all inclusive and delivers great customisation and support.
3. To always cross train the staff
Cross training the staff has to be of utmost importance. It should be a mandatory practice for the hospitals to follow. This is to ensure that nobody feels the vacuum of someone leaving. Recruitment is a lengthy and a daunting process. Till the authorities find a suitable candidate for the job, someone from inside the organisation has to fill in the shoes to keep the show running.
4. Personalise the training modules according to hospital needs
To efficiently use the resources of any organisation, a proper system and module is required. In this case the training module should cater to the specific training needs of the hospitals. Most available programmes are too generic in nature and can waste both resources and efforts. Therefore, some pre-packaged modules should be used which provide the flexibility to edit and include concepts related to the hospital’s needs.
5. Evaluation of the implemented programmes
To assess the program’s effectiveness, a uniform method or a way should be developed so that it is easier for everyone to evaluate whether or not they are benefiting from the program. If it is not adding any skill to the person’s competence then it is a waste of time for both the organisation and the employees. Also, they need to take into consideration individual needs of the employees as well. To incorporate the needs of everyone and the programme together can result in its effectiveness.
So, overall, there are 3 major points/practises to be considered while training medical staff and those are:
· Determining the needs of the staff to be trained
· Aligning them with objectives of hospital training
And then,
· Designing, creating, implementing and evaluating the module further to check its credibility.
6. Training should be inclusive of changing skills
The authentic training modules include traditional issues like clinical competency and timely compliance. But as the hospitals are experiencing, the needs and issues are evolving with the change in time. So, now the training modules also have to incorporate these newly found skills for better customer service and patient care.
7. Incorporate discussion with technology for better learning
Relying on the old lecture and discussion approach will lead to boredom as attention span starts to diminish after a while, therefore teaching should be done using some creative methods like group exercises, brainstorming sessions, which encourage collective learning and helps in creating a lively learning environment.
Conclusion:
To empower and encourage nurses and other staff at healthcare organisations, it is mandatory to draft an effective training module incorporating the mentioned tips and practices. It is great for any organisation as long as modules are intuitive and robust.
