ATD's Handbook for Talent Development and Training in Healthcare

Jacqueline Burandt, Gregory Rider, Niranjani Chidamber Papavaritis, Jacqueline Burandt, Gregory Rider, Niranjani Chidamber Papavaritis

• Publisher: Association for Talent Development
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781952157578
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Your Guide for Success in Talent Development and Healthcare
Within every corner of a healthcare system reside talent development and training initiatives and thus the need for talent development (TD) professionals and expertise. The ATD Talent Development and Training in Healthcare Handbook addresses the many opportunities and complex TD professionals face in the growing and rapidly changing healthcare space. Effective talent development is the thread that weaves through an entire healthcare organization to ensure it is up to standard with latest practices in treating patients while providing a safe and engaging environment for staff. Whether you are new to the field, a clinician new TD, or a seasoned TD professional in need of solutions and best practices, you can turn to this evergreen resource whenever you need tried-and-true advice.
TD professionals have the unique role of tying together organizational and employee advancement in healthcare systems—and likewise, this handbook dives into areas for both business and professional evolution. It covers six key themes across 26 chapters:

• Learning and Development Basics
• Organizational Development
• Employee Development
• Business Acumen for the Health System
• Digital Transformation and Literacy
• Patient-Centric Care
  Written by 25 fellow healthcare practitioners with extensive experience in the field—from nurses, physicians, and administrators to instructional designers, chief learning officers, technology experts, and leaders across the industry—this book will help you maximize the impact of your work and improve your abilities to deliver the best care possible to your patients.

PART 1

LEARNING AND
DEVELOPMENT
BASICS

CHAPTER 1

TRAINING DELIVERY AND FACILITATION

NAOMI J. KINNEY, CPTD

Mary is a facilitator and trainer at a local hospital and is about to deliver the last training session of the year. It is a weekly session that’s mandatory for all hospital staff, and is part of an annual cycle all hospitals are required to provide to ensure staff are up to par on the safety and overall best practices. Feeling relieved that this is the final session, Mary still wants to provide the same level of quality she did in her first. In addition to her basic presentation preparations (including a sign-in sheet, ample handouts, and room set-up), Mary wants to study her audience. She knows to never take for granted the individual and common needs of her learners, who are comprised of different staff members from across the facility. However, she does know that they all have one thing in common: They’re part of a healthcare team that is critical to the hospital’s ability to manage all emergency situations.

Here are just a few things all healthcare workers commonly do on a daily basis:

• Stay on their feet and cover a lot of ground, adding to their physical strain each day.

• Stay alert (a constant state of readiness) so they can manage each emergency within the hospital and within the local community.

• Accurately document a lot throughout the day to maintain hospital compliance.

• Maintain proper infection control and safety practices in each aspect of their work for the safety of everyone within the hospital environment.

• Manage each patient’s unique personality and needs (and those of their families).

• Maintain themselves physically and mentally so they’re able to be the best care provider they can be.

• Manage the needs of their personal lives to accommodate their family and loved ones.

So, Mary’s training not only has to be accurate and follow the latest regulatory guidelines to keep the hospital compliant, but more specifically, her facilitation and the delivery of the training requires some finesse with this unique audience and their demands. Mary’s audience could include a combination of doctors, nurses, technicians from the hospital’s various diagnostic areas; experienced, highly degreed hospital administrators and clinical staff; and the nonclinical, operational staff who run and maintain the facility and the grounds of the hospital, along with administrative, financial staff, and volunteers. Remember: At a hospital or nursing home, the lights never go out! Therefore, training facilitators must deliver training programs for all shifts, and each employee must complete and meet the same mandatory learning objectives required of the institution. They need to follow state and federal regulatory best practices consistently across all facilities that bear the hospital’s name.

If Mary delivers the in-person training with finesse, it can go a long way in making important messages stick with this highly technical audience, ensuring that the hospital passes its next impromptu regulatory visit or survey from inspectors of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). It will also allow her to connect with the learners (who are also her co-workers) in ways that benefit the staff and the organization in the long run.

Being an experienced talent development professional who has designed many training programs and delivered much in-person, instructor-led training in healthcare (and more specifically in hospitals), I’ve been in Mary’s shoes many times. I’ve had a number of interesting experiences during the delivery and facilitation of the mandatory training (as well as training on professional development subject matter) that were both rewarding and challenging with this particular audience. In this chapter, I’ll share some of these experiences (and lessons learned), along with training and facilitation techniques I used in the hospital and healthcare setting while maintaining the hospital’s educational requirements.

Knowing Your Audience

A very important aspect of designing learning is knowing who’s in the audience. For whom is this training being designed, and what are the objectives? Sometimes you’ll have the luxury of knowing who the participants are before they arrive. That allows you to adjust your delivery and facilitation game for each session. Like Mary, I was responsible for the annual mandatory training of all hospital, nursing home, and remote staff. In addition, I also designed and delivered the new employee orientation program. So, I recognized many of the faces I saw in the annual training sessions from orientation.

Trainers should study their rosters before their class to determine which audience members will be assets as they deliver the training message. If you know the participants well (either via previous learning events or from around the hospital), you can use this to your advantage. For example, my hospital’s leaders had special mandatory training sessions to attend annually, but they occasionally also attended the regular sessions with their staff to serve as role models and encourage attendance. I enjoyed calling on them to answer questions or lead discussions on a mandatory topic (like patient safety) or share how they apply safety policies in their area of the hospital.

You would ideally adjust your delivery if members of the leadership team are in your audience. Encourage their input so they can demonstrate their support of the policies and procedures throughout the training program. Poll the audience at the beginning of the class to see who knows what about these policies (which are taught annually, but don’t often change much from year to year). Most leaders love to speak out when given the opportunity. So, consider setting aside some time to impart their knowledge and experience during the class (assuming they’re present and willing) to keep the repetitive subject matter interesting.

When the trainer connects with their audience and customizes the delivery for each session, it creates a more accommodating and engaging experience for the learners. This leads to an ideal learning environment where the audience is open to participating, sharing, and learning with their co-workers.

If the audience remembers a lot of the content from last year, you can ask them to share their experiences on a hot topic (for example, consistently applied infection control best practices) to generate some dialogue. A good group facilitator will ask thought-provoking questions to probe the audience’s knowledge and generate discussion.

As an instructional designer, I have designed games like Safety Jeopardy, which can turn boring, repetitive facts into a fun competition. People can play Kahootz and similar games using their cell phones or other mobile devices. I like to use the participants’ names during these to further connect with my audience (and to help me remember their names).

These are all good ways of bringing hospital staff (clinical and nonclinical) together and keeping them talking about the subject matter even after the training ends (whether the subject was mandatory or a professional development class). They get to know one another more, they share their knowledge during training while having fun, and together they learn about the rules they all must consistently follow wherever they work. They can also apply and share best practices on nonmandatory subject matter.

Another way to get to know your audience while determining learning needs is to use a pre-class assessment to gauge knowledge levels and commonalities. Once you know what the audience knows, you can adjust your facilitation techniques to maximize your impact and save time. Many of these assessment tools are found online and are ideally used before the training starts so the trainer can use this information to structure the class accordingly. Here are some examples of pre-assessment tools you can use to tailor the training program to meet the learning objectives more effectively:

• Customized pre-assessment worksheets for the organization or the course can allow certain employees to test out of parts of the training program. (For example, I once worked at a hospital that allowed new hires to test out of a segment of orientation and annual training based on their previous knowledge of OSHA safety best practices.)

• Leadership assessments are often used to prepare for leadership development training. They allow trainers to gauge experience levels, leadership style, and knowledge of leadership principles before they start the program.

• Strength-finders surveys assess individual strengths on which to focus, as well as allow members in a group to see how their preferences can be leveraged in combination in the workplace.

• Individual personality assessment tools like DiSC and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) are good pre-assessment tools for teambuilding training, to gauge the nuances of team personalities, and to show anticipated interactions among certain team members.

Other pre-assessments are performed at the beginning of the class, either on paper or using electronic audience polling tools or gaming consoles. You can also use them intermittently during the course to quiz the audience on their sentiments or knowledge of a topic. I used them in a sexual harassment training program I gave at a children’s hospital I worked at years ago; they were very effective for this sensitive subject matter that many struggle to openly discuss.

Trainers should consider all the tools available to them that allow for a close audience connection, a good exchange and sharing of information among the participants, and an open, honest, relaxed training environment overall.

Key Takeaways

• Study the audience before the training delivery—review the roster, use pre-assessments, or poll the audience. This can be done as pre-work before the session or at the beginning of the session.

• Adjust the facilitation and content delivery as needed, depending on who will be in the audience (but be careful about making any changes to the actual training content).

• Call on familiar participants where possible, but find ways to involve all participants (especially leadership and quiet learners), depending upon their background and experience.

• Use fun training tools and activities to consistently convey the same content to all staff while keeping them engaged, participat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1. Learning and Development Basics
• Part 2. Organization Development
• Part 3. Employee Development
• Part 4. Business Acumen for the Health System
• Part 5. Digital Transformation and Literacy
• Part 6. Patient-Centric Care
• Acknowledgments
• References and Resources
• About the Contributors
• Index
• About the Editors
• Back Cover