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Make sure your training sessions are effective and useful

Nurse Leader Weekly, September 18, 2006

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One of the challenges of providing compliance educational sessions is to keep the topic interesting for the audience. Many compliance officers and educators have found that an important aspect of doing so is speaking at an educational level that the audience will understand. This is particularly important when talking about compliance-it is very easy to put an audience into "sleep mode" when you are speaking about evaluation and management documentation requirements or other billing regulations.

For example, if you were to give a very detailed analysis of the anti-kickback statute to a group of nurses, minimal learning would likely occur, and those nurses would probably leave the presentation with a negative view of compliance. Therefore, a better way to educate about compliance is to focus on simple messages for your audience. Identify the goals of your education program to ensure that your audience leaves a compliance education session knowing that

• there is a compliance program
• there is a compliance officer
• they can contact the compliance officer if they sense that something is wrong
• your organization is committed to compliance
• they should ask any questions they might have
• the organization wants them to communicate their concerns

One way to achieve these goals is to implement the Keep It Simple Simon (KISS) principle in your educational programs. Many compliance officers like to impress their audiences with their knowledge of compliance, but that type of education often does not allow the audience to achieve the goals described above.

In general, compliance sessions should discuss the importance of billing but shouldn't drill down to the minutia of documentation details. Save that information for your providers and coders. Instead, provide general information about topics.

Another way to achieve your education goals is via the Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA) model. For years, marketing professionals have used this model when developing advertising campaigns in which the goal is to create a positive image of a product and, ultimately, convince the consumer to purchase the product. Likewise, in compliance education, you are trying to convey a positive image of the organization (i.e., that it is ethical) and convince your audience to embrace its compliance program. Because your goals are similar to those of the professionals who created this model, using the AIDA model in your education can help you develop a framework for gaining audience buy-in.

Editor's note: This excerpt was adapted from Strategies for Healthcare Compliance, September 2006, HCPro, Inc.

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