• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Delivering education organizationwide

HCPro's Weekly Update on the ANCC Magnet Recognition Program®*, May 20, 2008

In an effort to deliver broad educational programs across the organization, Medical Center of Central Georgia (MCCG) in Macon, GA, has tried both centralized and decentralized staff development models and found a department-based educator combined with a small centralized department to be most effective, says Meryl Montgomery, RN, MSN, director of the learning center and ANCC Magnet Recognition Program® project director.

“The department-based educators are able to respond quickly and be closest to the point of need, while the central department (learning center) is responsible for oversight and coordination, avoiding redundancy and overlap, and assuring consistency in infrastructure,” says Montgomery. “While the change to combined department-based educator and centralized model occurred several years ago, we saw an immediate improvement—from 70% to greater than 95%—in areas like orientation checklist and housewide rollouts of new products being completed in a timely manner.”

MCCG created a model for the delivery of broad educational programs called “Train the Trainer” where department-based educators receive scripted educational tools and, after being assessed for competency, then deliver unit-level education and assess staff nurses on their competency. For example, department-based educators were trained on a video and its educational script, but within the script were specific areas for the department-based educators to customize according to unit issues, strengths, and weaknesses.

“This was an effective tool to roll out information that needed to have consistency, as well as uniqueness to reflect departmental differences,” says Montgomery.
 
Source: Meryl Montgomery, RN, MSN, MRP director and director of the learning center at Medical Center of Central Georgia. Member of HCPro’s talk group: Journey Talk.

• Comment
• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive

Comments