Teaching acute hospital staff and students about patient flow.

Good patient flow in an acute hospital is concerned with ensuring patients experience minimal delays throughout the hospital journey, from the emergency department to the wards, outpatients and to a suitable discharge destination. Good flow requires effective processes, staff buy-in and staff education. This study aimed to explore ways in which this topic is currently taught in an Irish acute hospital group. Participants were recruited to engage in semi-structured interviews about their experience of teaching patient flow. Following qualitative data analysis using a structured analysis guide, five main themes were identified: current methods, unstructured nature of teaching, frustration with frequency, dissemination of teaching/learning and opportunities for improvement. Recommendations from this study could be used to support a formalised approach to teaching this topic in the future. The use of the Teaching for Understanding framework and Universal Design for Learning principles are strongly advocated to support the development of a nationwide module, to structure the topics to be taught and provide guidance on how to effectively and efficiently teach this topic in Ireland.

Adapting healthcare security officer training to changing times.

The need to conduct field training programs of new officers instead of "learning by doing" has become essential as violent incidents in hospitals keep increasing, the author says. In this article he outlines the elements of a successful field training program.

On-the-job training won't cut it any more, experts say.

Today's case managers need far more than on-the-job training to understand the complexities of the job and all of the tasks they must do on a daily basis. The length and content of the training must be geared to individual case managers and take into account their knowledge, skill set and experience. New case managers should be able to pass competencies and should meet with the case manager director and the person doing the training at the end of the week to discuss how the training is going. Hospital case managers must develop their own case management training programs that are based on hospital procedures and policies, specific job descriptions, and goals of the department, some experts say. In many cases, rather than hiring an experienced case manager who may not fit well into your department, it's better to hire someone with the characteristics you are looking for and teach him or her case management.

[Seminar for HPH coordinators (Health Promoting Hospitals) and WHO HPH Autumn School 2011 held in Prague]. / Kurz koordinátoru HPH (Health Promoting Hospitals, Nemocnic podporujících zdraví) a podzimní skola WHO v Praze.

Health Promoting Hospitals (HPH) is an international network of more than 800 health care subjects. The HPH initiative is based on an idea of a hospital being an appropriate place not only to treat illnesses, but also to actively promote health. It aims to improve the quality and safety of health care via specialized interventions targeting a few key areas, such as tobacco and other dependences, physical activity, psychological support, or patient-professional communication. Activities are oriented toward both patients and hospital staff and use only methods of evidence-based medicine. To facilitate programme implementation and evaluation, the hospital quality goals are summarized in five HPH standards. The present paper informs about the seminar for HPH coordinators in Czech Republic as well as about the WHO HPH Autumn School 2011 held in Prague.

Choosing the right strategy for point-of-service collections.

Healthcare organizations should keep three key considerations in mind when selecting and implementing a pricing transparency tool: The approach that the tool will take (e.g., claims-based or contract-based). The training required of staff. The benchmarks that will be used to measure performance, ROI, and satisfaction of patients and staff.

Addressing unfunded training mandates in hospitals: engaging the private sector in low- and middle-income countries.

Health worker finance and provision are discussed in this article in the context of the global shortage of human resources. Key issues related to public and private finance or provision of tertiary health education institutions are highlighted, and costs, benefits, and feasibility of potential financing or provision solutions are identified. Engagement of the private sector can expand the resources available for education and align incentives to address an important inefficiency: the unfunded mandate of post-graduate in-service training at hospitals that jointly provide education and health services.

Terrorist threat: Creating a nationwide damage control training program for non-trauma care providers.

INTRODUCTION: The current terrorist threat challenges nations to train numerous non-trauma care providers with different backgrounds in damage control (DC) strategies. The purpose of this work was to propose a specific DC training program. METHODS: A Task Force of 16 civilian and military physicians met for a 24-hour session, to propose the construction of a DC training program for non-specialised caregivers. RESULTS: Existing DC training programs are heterogeneous, mainly theoretical and almost only for physicians. A program entitled Damage Control for Terrorist Attack Victims (DC-TAV) was then proposed. Identified training targets were care providers from prehospital and hospital staffs, with no experience in trauma care. The training objectives were the improvement of individual and collective skills in managing terrorist attacks casualties. The tools selected for training concerned e-learning on a dedicated digital teaching platform (including a core section of four modules with types and mechanisms of injury, basic DC techniques, triage, organisation of emergency medical response and two complementary modules for doctors with DC resuscitation including remote transfusion and DC surgery), hands-on workshops with procedural simulation and full-scale simulation exercises, technical (tourniquets, haemostatic gauzes, needle thoracostomy, chest tube drainage, management of airway, coniotomy) and non-technical (leadership, communication, coordination and triage, decision-making, appropriate use of resources) skills. Finally, an evaluation of the DC-TAV program was planned. CONCLUSIONS: The DC-TAV program is an ambitious, civilian-military, nationwide and long-term program, based on a harmonised standard of care and including multidimensional training. Further studies are required to assess its efficacy.

Training and development of hospital security staff.

Proper training of newly hired officers and annual training of seasoned officers can produce the greatest return of investment in terms of attaining the highest level of security and safety. Developing such a program, the author points out, is not an easy job and requires, among other things, budget discipline. In this article he presents training guidelines which he believes can be effectively applied to implement a successful training program.

Targeted employee training lowers registration error rate.

The registration error rate at the University of Alabama Health Services Foundation was running about 30%, and that was having a negative impact on both billing and collections operations. The health system created a process to identify the employees committing the most errors, and then individual workers were provided with additional information and training ro help improve their accuracy. The result was a dramatic performance improvement.

Hospital dietitians in mid-career. II. Continuing education experiences and plans.

An objective of continuing education is to assist in maintaining professional competency. This research examined continuing education experiences and plans of hospital dietitians in mid-career in three practice areas: administrative, general, and clinical dietetics. Data were collected on continuing education hours accumulated, attendance at professional dietetic meetings, time devoted to professional reading, topics of seminars attended, and plans for graduate study. Data indicated that mid-career hospital dietitians specialize in one area of dietetic practice and attempt to maintain their competence in that area through continuing education.

Training of personnel-pediatrics.

The educational programs that have been developed in newborn special care facilities have two purposes: first, they teach personnel the manual skills that are necessary to manage the sick newborn infant; second, they provide personnel with a better understanding of neonatal pathophysiology so that they can begin to recognize the subtle responses of the sick neonate. With these skills and knowledge, the nursery staff assumes a more active role in the team's effort to preserve a child's life.

Emergency department duty: a training model for the future.

Air National Guard (ANG) medical units perform 2 weeks of active duty training each year to develop and maintain essential medical skills. Providing meaningful training is, however, a great challenge to both the Guard unit and its active duty counterpart. Too often, annual training is not a relevant learning experience and so the ability of some Guard medical units to respond to actual medical taskings is compromised. The 135th Tactical Clinic, an ANG medical unit, devised and implemented a unique plan--a plan particularly relevant to the medical support requirements of Operation Desert Shield.

21 predictions for the future of hospital staff development.

No one knows for sure how the future will look. However, there is no better time than today to begin envisioning and creating our preferred future. This article discusses several factors that will impact the future of nursing staff development. Twenty-one predictions are offered that include: change, restructuring, teamwork, leadership development, paradigms, support networks, staff development roles, learning, value of life experiences, patient education, cultural diversity, and technology. Strategies for educators to position themselves for the future are suggested. The future is ours to create. The intent of this manuscript is to challenge staff development educators to create visions and develop strategies to construct the preferred future of their roles and the nursing staff development function.

Total quality training in the hospital setting.

Total quality management requires a commitment to continuous quality improvement and a complete transformation of a healthcare organization's operations. An ongoing process, it prescribes training at all levels of an organization's hierarchy as well as the routine evaluation of the training programs' quality.

Staff cross-training caught in cross fire.

Saying the healthcare industry no longer can afford turf battles over which professionals will perform which patient-care duties--such as a recent skirmish in California concerning the role of perfusionists--a growing number of hospital executives are moving away from specialized staff and are cross-training workers in multiple skills. Advocates say it will relieve persistent labor shortages and save money, but foes say cross-training will only harm quality and increase costs.