Making movies on location…
One of the constants of any effective physical environment/safety program is the effort to ensure that folks at point-of-care/point-of-service are provided adequate education and training to ensure ongoing competency. I suspect that each of you make what use you can of the “regularly scheduled” activities like fire drills, surveillance rounds, tracers, etc., to be able to get face time with folks, but as healthcare organizations become increasingly more complicated, it makes me wonder to what extent it is possible to “get” to even a majority of folks in your organization.
As a subset consideration to this, with the intended focus on the outpatient settings, at what point does the safety competency of staff outside of your/our direct oversight become a significant (potential) vulnerability relative to the survey process? In a perfect world, everyone would receive the “same” basic orientation, but I think even that can be a difficult undertaking, particularly when it comes to the folks in the outpatient settings.
The question I have for group discussion is how much folks have been able to take advantage of mobile video technology to educate staff? I have never been a particularly big fan of computer-based learning as, at least in pretty much all the instances with which I am familiar, the programs tend to be a little too much “cookie cutter” for my liking. I also know that the past 15-18 months probably haven’t left a lot of time for big productions, but has anyone out there been able to harness technology in a sufficiently “personal” way to effectively provide education to the folks in your charge?
I’m curious as to whether anyone is developing their own content, etc. Please share if you’ve got something you’re working on, or anything you’ve finished. I suspect that things are going to become more complicated on the education front and some sharing of ideas and approaches might just be the key to future success!
About the Author: Steve MacArthur is a safety consultant with The Greeley Company in Danvers, Mass. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare management and consulting experience to his work with hospitals, physician offices, and ambulatory care facilities across the country. He is the author of HCPro's Hospital Safety Director's Handbook and is contributing editor for Healthcare Safety Leader. Contact Steve at stevemacsafetyspace@gmail.com.