Hello Christina!
We do both a learning needs assessment, which was sent out earlier today. It is sent out every other year and in those regards we're looking more at professional development opportunities.
For annual skills day, we take a few different approaches to determine what is needed. I first connect with our safety partners to determine if there are any trends in safety events that will help us identify any areas we need to focus on. I know already that immunization safety will be covered again in 2023. I then check with our regulatory partners. They're aware of any items that may be required for regulatory purposes that we weren't addressing previously. Many of the requirements we are able to meet through online modules. Be sure to check out the Association of Nursing Professional Development (ANPD)'s clinical matrix, which is a crosswalk of the different regulatory requirements in regards to education. The ambulatory standards should be found here through the AAACN website:
https://www.aaacn.org/practice-resources/ambulatory-care/anpd-ambulatory-care-tabs My regulatory partner is also the nurse who is engaged in our policy approvals, so she is also aware of any policies that may have been updated that would state something is to be performed annually. Your organizational policies likely reflect whatever is in place from the regulatory point of view (OSHA, TJC, etc...) but that's another great place to review.
We also have a group of system educators that meet monthly. We're able to discuss things happening at our own facility so we can collaborate on things that impact all of us and can see the bigger picture. If there is a larger system initiative rolling out soon I try to incorporate that into any skills days in that time frame (ex: PPE donning and doffing with hazardous drug handling).
Finally, we look at high risk/low volume skills and what I've started calling "high impact" skills. They may occur frequently but if it were done incorrectly it could have an impact on the patient or on the organization. I don't know that I could call them high risk skills, as we're not looking at things like restraints or blood product administration where an error could result in immediate harm. In high impact skills I'm looking at things like blood pressure measurement. It happens often, but if someone is checking a blood pressure immediately upon going into the room or using the wrong cuff size, there could be long term impacts (treatments based off of incorrect values, financial impacts with quality measures, etc...).
If you have a large nursing presence in your clinic area, you could also consider following a competency based validation method (Donna Wright's model), where the clinical team's competencies are validated on an ongoing basis with their normal work habits. We have not started this yet in our areas but I'm aware of some inpatient peers who were able to implement it during peak COVID restrictions.
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Andrea Kelly MSN, RN, NPD-BC
Director, Population Health
ECU Health Physicians (formerly Vidant Medical Group)
Greenville NC
(252)847-3930
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-08-2022 13:14
From: Christina Kearns
Subject: Clinical Staff - Skills Validation/Learning Need Assessment
Hi All,
Curious to see if your institutions have a method in place to determine the annual skills validation needs for your ambulatory clinical staff?
We are getting ready to administer a learning needs assessment/survey for an internal assessment, but do you also look elsewhere for guidance?
Thanks in advance!
Christina
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Christina Kearns MSN, RN, AMB-BC
Director, Nursing Professional Practice & Education
NYU Langone Health
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