Assessing Planetary Health Curricular Needs Across Health Professions Programs.

With growing recognition that climate change is a significant threat to human health, allied health professionals are increasingly recognized as critical allies in addressing this threat. This article describes the approach that Rush University's College of Sciences is pursuing to better prepare health sciences students for this reality. Faculty and students enrolled across all programs of the College were surveyed regarding their levels of concern about global warming using items from the Six Americas Survey, as well as perceived importance of planetary health curricular elements adapted from the Planetary Health Report Card. Faculty were additionally asked about perceived opportunities to bring planetary health education into each of the degree programs offered by the university. A total of 37 faculty and 43 students completed the survey, collectively representing all programs in the college. Responses reflected widespread interest in expanding planetary health education, but topic priorities and optimal methods for implementation differed between programs. Although the survey process had limitations, it demonstrated the need for greater attention to planetary health across curricula and offered more efficient approaches implementing this essential content across programs.

NCHL's "Best Organizations for Leadership Development" Program: A Case Study in Improving Evidence-based Practice through Benchmarking and Recognition.

Increasingly, addressing healthcare's grand challenges requires complex system-level adaptations involving continuously evolving teams and leaders. Although leadership development strategies have been shown to improve individual leader effectiveness, much less is known about how organization-level leadership development affects organization-level outcomes. To begin building an evidence base as well as encouraging evidence-based practices, the US-based National Center for Healthcare Leadership developed a program capitalizing on leaders' demonstrated interest in organizational competitiveness: the biennial Best Organizations for Leadership Development (BOLD) program. In this chapter, we describe the philosophy behind this unique survey program and summarize research to date on relationships between survey dimensions and organizational outcomes such as patient experience and financial performance. We conclude with a description of promising areas for future study.

Understanding Student Preferences in the Selection of a Graduate Allied Health Program: A Conjoint Analysis Study.

ISSUE: As the healthcare landscape rapidly changes, graduate allied health programs must position themselves to educate the next generation of healthcare professionals in a highly competitive landscape. No studies have directly measured the relative importance of attributes in program selection by prospective healthcare students. METHODS: We surveyed graduate healthcare management program applicants in the 2018 admissions cycle (n=512) to determine which attributes were most important in program choice. We utilized conjoint analysis to estimate utilities and importance scores of six attributes: program ranking, cost, work experience, geography, distance to home, and salary. We then conducted a market simulation to predict relative market share of academic programs. OUTCOMES: The most important attribute to prospective students was the projected starting salary, with US News and World Report ranking and tuition cost the second and third most important attributes, respectively. Each attribute was relatively inelastic respective to tuition cost. CONCLUSION: While future leaders placed the most value on earnings when selecting a program, they also valued rankings and cost. By focusing on these factors, programs can target their marketing efforts to recruit the best potential future healthcare leaders, while this method can be replicated to gauge the most important relative attributes for a variety of healthcare professions.

Preparing Future Healthcare Leaders through Graduate Education: Impact of Program Accreditation on Quality Improvement.

Accreditation is used by many health professions to ensure the adequacy of their training programs in preparing future leaders and practitioners. The impact of program accreditation, however, has not historically been the subject of systematic study, meaning the case for program accreditation has been more philosophical than empirical. We hypothesized that a healthcare management program's length of continuous accreditation (accreditation tenure) would be associated with factors related to applicant quality, program selectivity, and starting salaries of students upon graduation. We conducted a retrospective, correlational analysis to investigate the relationship between accreditation tenure and program quality and outcome metrics. The sample included all graduate programs (n=72) that were accredited in the 2013-2014 academic year and had completed a full annual report to the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME). As hypothesized, we found factors within each of our three areas of interest to be associated with accreditation tenure, providing at least preliminary evidence of an association between program-level accreditation and continuous quality improvement in programmatic outcomes.

Leadership development practices and hospital financial outcomes.

Affordable Care Act legislation is requiring leaders in US health systems to adapt to new and very different approaches to improving operating performance. Research from other industries suggests leadership development can be a helpful component of organizational change strategies; however, there is currently very little healthcare-specific research available to guide design and deployment. The goal of this exploratory study is to examine potential relationships between specific leadership development practices and health system financial outcomes. Results from the National Center for Healthcare Leadership survey of leadership development practices were correlated with hospital and health system financial performance data from the 2013 Medicare Cost Reports. A general linear regression model, controlling for payer mix, case-mix index, and bed size, was used to assess possible relationships between leadership practices and three financial performance metrics: operating margin, days cash on hand, and debt to capitalization. Statistically significant associations were found between hospital-level operating margins and 5 of the 11 leadership practices as well as the composite score. Relationships at the health system level, however, were not statistically significant. Results provide preliminary evidence of an association between hospital financial performance and investments made in developing their leaders.

Predictors of student satisfaction with allied health educational program courses.

UNLABELLED: Little information is available regarding the effectiveness of various teaching methods and styles on student learning and satisfaction in allied health educational programs. We used the IDEA Center's course evaluation system to determine which teaching competencies were most predictive of students' satisfaction and progress on objectives. METHODS: At the conclusion of each quarter, all students in 13 different allied health programs were asked to complete standardized course evaluations. Students responded to 20 questions grouped into five teaching competencies. Student satisfaction was assessed using survey questions to rate course and instructor excellence. All questions used a 5-point Likert scale. RESULTS: There were 2,924 student evaluations returned (72.5% response). Teaching competencies predicted 62% of the variation in course satisfaction, 67% of the variation in teacher satisfaction, and 58% of the variation in progress on relevant objectives (p<0.001. Stimulating student interest was the strongest predictor of course satisfaction and progress on relevant objectives (p<0.001. Structuring classroom experiences was the strongest predictor of teacher satisfaction (p<0.001. CONCLUSION: By developing specific teaching competencies, instructors may improve student satisfaction and progress on relevant objectives. Educational institutions may also be able to utilize this information to create faculty developments plans in an effort to improve teaching and student satisfaction levels.