Executive Suite

It's a new year, and with a new year comes new plans. Many senior care organizations are setting their employee education plans and calendars for the year. With new plans come new considerations for training and new options.

The main question for any education plan is: How exactly will the facility train everyone? Many facilities still rely on face-to-face education for mandatory inservices and internal policy training. Face-to-face training, while valuable for certain topics, takes up an incredible amount of time for someone who most likely has other responsibilities.

Timing is another issue: How often is an inservice offered to train everyone-two, three, six times? Tracking brings up its own issues: Who will track inservices to prepare for survey, from a compliance and documentation standpoint? Finally, facilities need to consider employee satisfaction: Do employees find the training to be interesting? Are they retaining what they learn? As organizations set their training plans for the year, these considerations and more come into play.

Role of Technology

As with many aspects of our lives, technology is playing a larger and more prominent role in senior care training. Online education provides convenience, time savings and tracking. It gives staff educators more time to focus on richer employee education, such as in-person talks and demos, or custom courses that focus on topics that specifically affect the facility.

For directors of nursing, it provides the opportunity to spend time on the floor, providing instant feedback and just-in-time training when they see issues occur. Online courses also assure providers that each employee is getting the same message and lessons, so training is consistent across the facility (or multiple facilities).

For topics like fall prevention, weight loss or infection control, education can be crucial to preventing these issues from occurring. Online training programs also provide accurate, real-time records that prove training occurred and that employees retained the information they were given. These records are crucial to a positive survey outcome and decreased litigation risk.

Invest in Staff

Even in a tough economy, investing in staff is one of the best things an employer can do. Encouraging employee engagement shows that you care about their success, and can decrease behavior issues, conflict and turnover. Using online education, with its flexible schedule and promotion of self-driven success, shows staff that you respect their time away from work by not expecting them to come in on their day off for mandatory training. Employees can train while at work on their regularly scheduled shifts. Once they finish a course, it is automatically tracked so there is no need to worry about paperwork and sign-in sheets. In-person training can be tracked on line so there is no need for a parallel paper tracking system. Employees can have the best education plan possible: online courses for regulatory topics and regular training, and in-person sessions for specialized topics or topics that require in-person demonstration. Employees will know that the organization respects their time and is willing to invest in their education and professional development.

Educating Family

Educating staff is critically important, but what about resident families? Resident families have a certain expectation of their loved one's experience and how things should be done in a facility, especially if this is their first encounter with placing someone in senior care. Often, the family's expectation and reality can be incredibly different. Mismanaged expectations and lack of communication from the facility can start the family/facility relationship off on the wrong foot.

How do you close the gap between the family's expectation and reality? The key to an effective resident family relationship is to educate and connect with families to build trust and proactively communicate from the very beginning. Technology is already helping senior care organizations manage their family relationships, with several training providers offering resident family courses. A truly effective relationship-building program will combine education with tools that are designed to engage family members and manage your relationship with them.

A custom family portal allows facilities to provide education and manage expectations, communicate regularly and address concerns as they happen, and be proactive with solutions. Chances are, with a family portal, organizations will have less complaint surveys and reduced litigation risk should there be an adverse event. You will build a partnership with your resident's family that facilitates open dialogue, working together to achieve a common goal while providing much-needed support and resources.

Technology is a part of our lives, but senior care has been slow to adopt technology for a while. With the advent of EHRs and drug-fulfillment systems-and online learning, which has been in the market for at least 10 years now-organizations realize that technology is a necessary tool to help their business run smoothly, including their training. In addition to providing well-trained staff (and thus better care), technology is now helping senior care with the resident family relationship to build trust, manage risk and stand out from the competition. From staff to families, everyone is educated in an easy-to-use format and in a manner that is easy to understand-resulting in better overall care for our seniors.

Mike Mutka is President and COO of Silverchair Learning Systems, Cary, N.C. DISCLOSURE: Silverchair provides online training to senior care organizations.

SIDEBAR:

A Role in Compliance

By Tamar Abell

There is often tremendous variation in the quality of care by facility, by unit and even area of care within a facility. A standardized training program is required for providers to maintain compliance and ensure consistent quality of care. Consistent and targeted training furthers the culture of compliance throughout an organization and ensures that training goals are met.

"Training is absolutely essential," says David Zimmerman, professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director emeritus of the Center for Health Systems Research and Analysis at UW-Madison. "Organizations need to ensure that all individuals in their employ are aware of what the rules are with respect to compliance with regulations."

"Effective compliance programs are all about training," adds legal regulatory and clinical compliance attorney David Hoffman, president, David Hoffman & Associates, PC, Philadelphia. "You can have the best people stand up and do training, but how do you know the audience understood it? If you look at their surveys you'll see the very same things they in-serviced people on six months earlier, they're still doing wrong."

Find out how to make sure they get it right, but reading the full white paper, "The Case For Compliance," at www.upstairssolutions.com/complianceALT.

Tamar Abell is principal, Upstairs Solutions, Skokie, Ill. DISCLOSURE: Upstairs Solutions is an online training company.