Big Training Mistakes by Health Care Institutions

I just walked into Elizabeth's office at around 3 p.m. and I could see her agitated. She was very upset because her boss left her a message to go for a three day mandatory leadership training. She was angry because she was never told and had no say in making the decision as to what time she would have wanted to go. Elizabeth told me she hoped it was a mistake. Was it a mistake? No, it was not a mistake. Elizabeth is one of the managers in a big health care system. Evidently, her management skill problems have attracted the attention of some of the people in administration including her boss. She was therefore scheduled for a mandatory leadership training course so she would learn more about how to be a leader in today's complex and challenging work place. Based on what I knew about this young lady, she needed the training because her management skills needed more to be deserved. She was however fighting the decision that was sending her to the training without prior notice. "I have attended many seminars, training courses, and I'm sick of attending any more training this year." It was this statement which initiated the desire to write this article. Truly, Elizabeth needed training to do a better job, yet after attending so many educational training programs, her management style had not changed. So, I started investigating the root causes of this problem.

Wrong Choice of Seminars

After days of investigation and interviewing managers and supervisors in many health care institutions. I noticed many of them were suffering from the same problem of seminar burn-out! Why are managers not motivated to attend seminars that could help them improve their job performance? After my conversations with these managers, the problems became obvious. One of the major problems was, the managers were being sent to too many generic training programs. Generic training are those training given by teachers from the fields not related to that of the managers. For example a generic training may be given by a well known football coach because his team did well for the season. A generic leadership training can be given by a motivator who used to sell cars or was a successful stock broker. Generic leadership training can be helpful to managers in health care field, but they have their limitations. Therefore such training must be limited and exchanged for training by those in the health care fields and closer to the manager's field. After attending too many generic training, most managers got tired and they stopped listening because the teachers are from unrelated training and background. Inadvertently, a manager develops a mental block to the utilization of the information collected from such seminars even if they may be useful. Sometimes managers were unable to translate what they learned from a non-related field to their work. This is a very critical issue when considering training programs for health care workers. Can the training from the program easily be applied directly to the manager's job? Learning to play a good ball game and taking the team to the Super Bowl have less to do with working in the hospital with different    challenges. Many hospital managers are struggling to solve specific problems unique to their situations. Consequently, a professional peer who had worked with solutions to those specific problems will be more beneficial to the managers compared to a generic motivator. For example, I worked for three years on how to solve specimen collection problems and improve communication between the lab and the nursing department. I will be a better speaker and motivator for the nursing staff on the topic of  Specimen Collection and Error Prevention, than just a generic speaker. But, I will not be a useful speaker on how to manage hospital's revenue even if I'm a successful business person.

Employees benefit more from training by those who can relate to their professions and of course their problems. Even within the health care field, there is a limitation to how leadership training can be effective across the entire health care disciplines. A nurse may benefit more from a nurse just like a lab manager will benefit more from the training given by a lab person who is an expert in leadership training. This is not to say that a lab person will never benefit from a training given by a nurses or a nurse benefiting from a training given by a lab person, but there are limitations. For example, a nurse can give a good and helpful lecture to lab workers regarding the process of working up a patient for admission. Similarly, the lab person can give a good and helpful lecture to the nurses about the process of specimen testing in the laboratory. However, any of them will do a bad job in dealing with everyday problem faced by respective health care professionals in different discipline of health care. For example a nurse can not know lab's problem more than lab, and a lab cannot know the nursing problems more than the nurses. A person in a particular profession is more adept in solving that problem than giving the problem to a former football head coach because he took his team to the Super Bowl. There is nothing more annoying than the explanation of a business strategy using the analogy of the quarter-back or the pitcher during a ball game!

Workers Learn more from their Professional Peers

Unfortunately, many health care institutions are using generic seminars to solve management skill and leadership training needs. Such training are not totally useless, but they have limited use. If  generic seminars are used over and over again, they become totally useless. This was the primary reason why some of the health care managers were fed up with generic training programs. Based on my observation of health care professionals over the years, I learned that people tend to learn more from their peers. For example, I watched and listened to women at work during their break time. Many of them would hurry to join their friends just because they had to blow some steam or ventilate some emotions. The issue is always something most of the women agree to dislike. The conversation in the room is primarily based on that dislike and nothing positive is ever said about that person or situation in question. In other words, they have fed each other so much negativism over the issue, everybody walks away with so much hate for the person or issue under discussion. Sadly, all these emotions might have been generated over a misconception or false information given by somebody within the group. The group discussion consequently legitimizes their dislike for a particular person or policy under discussion. Similarly, positive things have been discussed in the same fashion except with less intensity.

The relevance of this explanation is that, people are easily influenced more so by their professional or play peers. Education by a professional colleague may do more good for managers than seminars by generic speakers. Unfortunately, generic training are being conducted by professional speakers who charge a lot of money for their services. A professional peer would have charged less money for his service. Next time, before spending a lot of money on generic training for health care workers, consider an in-house (or a within profession) speaker. Find out if there are professionals within the institution or within the network who can do the same thing and often much better than generic speakers. In-house presentation by professionals with similar backgrounds are more effective and less costly. They are more adept in the problems of the  health care institution and their professional peers, and will usually do a better job than generic speakers. This is not to say that generic presentations should be completely avoided. Generic presenter have a place especially when looking for fresh voices and opinions. In some situations, they may occasionally be brought in to re-emphasize the issues being taught by an in-house (or within profession) speaker. But, all the leadership training should not be done by generic trainers. Most C.E.Os coming from the business side tend to make this mistake compared to medical school where most of the professional presentations are done by in-house professors or research fellows.

The issue of a prophet is not appreciated in his own country has been associated with unwillingness to use in-house speakers by some businesses. Checkout this story. A business paid $1,500 for 10 of the employees to attend a weekend manager's training workshop out of town. The workshop was being given by a professional seminar company. At the conference, the C.E.O of the business who also went with the group was shocked to find that the person conducting the seminar was one of his employees. He conducted seminars on the side for additional income. The entire training including travel, lodging, and food cost the institution over $30,000. Just $5,000 could have been paid to the employee to give the same training to fellow workers in-house instead of going out of town and wasting all the thousands of dollars.

by Yinka Vidal, author, 101 Ways to Prevent Medical Errors

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