April Nash-Kacala
HCS/587 Creating Change within Organizations
May 12, 2014
Barbara Carter RN, MSN
Quarterly Education Days- Part II
Health care organizations employ both licensed and unlicensed staff. Therefore, the skill level varies. Health care employees must maintain the highest level of skills that are afforded to them by licensure or training to ensure that patients receive safe, quality care at all times. One of the Joint Commission accreditation standards is that hospitals have documented proof that the people providing patient care are working within their scope of practice and are competent (The Joint Commission, 2014). Therefore, staff must annually demonstrate through physical assessment and observation that they can perform unit based skills proficiently. Skill is the physical ability to engage in action or a series of actions to achieve a predetermined conclusion. Whereas, knowledge is the mental comprehension how activity are performance (Marrelli, Tondora, and Hoge, 2005). Quarterly Education Days are a proposed change to the process for knowledge and skill attainment. The project would centrally locate associate skills competencies, consolidate resources, and eliminate individual unit skill training redundancy. In addition, the program would institute a method of operations to establish that hospital personnel have completed the yearly skill checks. Moreover, the required documentation is transferred to the appropriate unit files to ensure compliance with The Joint Commission standards.
Part one of the Quarterly Education Days proposal examined the benefits, barriers, resources, organizational readiness, influencing factors, and the goal-setting theory. The second part of the Quarterly Education Days proposal will discuss the need for a monitoring system when orchestrating change, to prevent confusion and establish accountability. Conduct a review of how roles and relationships influence the change process. In addition, explain how open, effective communication can prevent miscommunication during the transition.
Methods and Monitoring
Change, no matter how necessary, is rendered ineffective when encountering overwhelming resistance. Therefore, prior to implementation of the Quarterly Education Day project, the stakeholder need to be identified, responsibilities delegated, and quality assurance methods outlined (Spector, 2010). The major contributors in this process are the Unit Associate Chiefs, the Unit Nurse Mangers, the Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS), the Nurse Educators, employees, and patients. To ensure the completion of every team member’s skill training, a tiered design of checks and balances is crucial. The system will establish task responsibility and quality assurance measures to oversee the progression of the transformation. The first step is a meeting between, the Unit Associate Chiefs, Nurse Manager, CNS, and Nursing Educators. This meeting will determine what training skills each unit needs, how the training is to be documented, the central physical location, time frames of each tier for completion, and how to handle employee scheduling. The collection of data is an upward flow of information needed to establish team roles and individual responsibilities. The Quarterly Education Day starts when the employee signs the check in sheet for the day and receives their skill check agenda. This document is a list of the skills that the person is required to complete that day. Upon staff completion of each skill, the instructor will fill out all pertinent paperwork and review it for accuracy prior to the employee moving on to the next skill check station. The employee will be required to sign out upon completion of all assigned training and asked to complete the process evaluation form. During this time, the Educational Competency Coordinator will confirm attendance, collect paperwork, and verify that documentation exists for all the