Defensive medicine practice has led to a reduction in the number of errors occurring during patient treatment and care. However, now and then, errors do occur that could cost a patient’s life or lead to financial loss in damages payments to an aggrieved patient. To mitigate the occurrence of errors, training healthcare professionals, especially, the surgical staff is critical (McConnell, 2019). Consequently, if I was in charge of training surgical staff to reduce surgery-related errors, I would implement several strategies to ensure that the different professionals receive training. First, I would engage all the concerned professionals in drafting comprehensive surgical department policies and procedures guidelines. These guidelines would touch on the responsibilities of all concerned parties and give clear instructions on what should be done under various circumstances. Further, the guidelines would be distributed to all surgical department staff and incentives added to ensure that they read and understand them.
I would also organize field-specific training and workshops to ensure that training of all the different staff is conducted. For example, I would separately organize workshops and training for surgeons, preoperative nurses, and hospital executives, among others. The workshops would ensure that they are up to date with the best practice. Finally, to ensure that the surgical teams have adequate time for training, I would ensure that they have flexible schedules and also pay overtime for any time spent in training beyond normal working hours. A major concern for many scheduled training sessions is that the staff may not have the time to attend due to rigid schedules and work commitments. Thus, a flexible schedule would enable healthcare professionals to attend training while a monetary incentive would encourage them to stay beyond their shift to be trained on how to reduce surgery-related errors (Rowe et al., 2021). Therefore, staff would be able to train on safety because of a flexible work schedule and field-specific training programs.
In regards to the type of training and development activities that I would implement to ensure a change of culture in relation to reducing surgery-related errors, I would introduce and schedule regular and mandatory training sessions for surgical teams. By introducing these sessions, I would instill a culture of care and safety which would be good for the general health of patients and the financial health of the healthcare organization (Charles, 2021). Further, any staff, directly and indirectly responsible for surgery-related errors would be required to undergo a mandatory re-training program and pass several tests before being allowed to care for patients requiring surgery. To ensure that this policy change does not disincentivize employees, it would be drafted into the organization’s HR policies and necessary sensitization carried out among existing and new employees.
To ensure this policy is effective, all departments in the healthcare organization would follow this policy. Having this policy implemented by all departments in the organization would create uniformity and serve to reinforce the image that we care about the quality of care we provide. In addition, I would harmonize and build company policies around continuous training and development of all staff, including surgical staff. Policies are the surest way to ensure that employees internalize and adopt a new culture (Charles, 2021). Finally, I would seek support for new policies and ensure compliance by the upper management. Compliance by upper management gives employees the impression that the new policies are here to stay and are not implemented selectively. It is also a way for the executive staff to lead by example and show that there would be no exemptions to the policy change.
An organization cannot survive with its most critical resource being unproductive or giving low-quality healthcare services. Consequently, learning by training on the job and otherwise is an essential part of maintaining qualitative advantages and improving productivity (Rowe et al., 2021). The aim of any training including the one I would implement in my organization is to positively impact the surgical staff and make the vision and mission of the organization clearer. Further, the kind of training envisioned would improve the healthcare competitive advantage which would eventually translate into increased profitability. A competent learning management program would also present employees with opportunities for collaboration within the organization. As the administrator in charge, it would be my responsibility to ensure competent learning paths are available for new and existing surgical staff to continually improve their skills while working in teams to ensure organizational success.
The other HRM activity that could be impacted by the training and collaboration is hiring. Hiring is one of the key and routine HR activities that ensures that all open positions are filled with the right candidates for the job. In selecting employees for hire, an organization must ensure that the employee will conform to the organizational culture and maintain or even exceed the standards of service set by the organization (McConnell, 2019). Consequently, a change of culture to include training and collaborations would require the hiring teams to only select employees who can work in teams and groups and cope with rigorous on-the-job training. Hiring employees who would conform to the organizational culture requires the hiring teams to look beyond professional qualifications. The selected employees must share the mission, vision, and core values of the organization.
HR’s responsibility does not end with the successful hiring of the right candidate for the job. Instead, the HR responsibility towards the staff extends to the whole time that the hired staff will work at the organization. Thus, the hired staff must be molded to match the standards of service expected by stakeholders. This molding takes the form of continuous and regular on-the-job training and reevaluation of the staff knowledge on specific topics and safety regulations and procedures (McConnell, 2019). For surgical staff, it is critical to religiously follow laid down policies and procedures and have continuous and regular on-the-job training to avoid costly mistakes and errors. The role of the HR administrator in this is to ensure that the allocated hours of training, development, and evaluation are productively utilized by the concerned staff. Thus, while an HR’s initial responsibility is to fill an open spot in an organization, their daily responsibility changes to helping the hired employee succeed in their roles by organizing training and evaluations and ensuring effective utilization of allocated training hours by the concerned employees.
The potential loss to an organization due to errors and mistakes makes training and continuous improvement of skills and knowledge a priority for any organization. In healthcare organizations, the costs of errors and mistakes may mean life and death for the patient and the organization. This makes training on safety and other procedures necessary for existing and hired staff. As an administrator in a healthcare organization, I would regularly introduce on-the-job training, draft policies and procedure guidelines, and plan to offer employees flexible schedules to ensure they have the time and are adequately trained. I would also ensure new hires fit the organizational culture and are put on a regular training schedule to improve their skills and knowledge.
References
Charles, A. (2021). Surgery, surgical training, surgeons, and the need for social consciousness. Surgery, 169(6), 1281–1282. Web.
McConnell, C. R. (2019). Human resource management in health care: Principles and Practice (11th Ed). Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Rowe, A. K., Rowe, S. Y., Peters, D. H., Holloway, K. A., & Ross-Degnan, D. (2021). The effectiveness of training strategies to improve healthcare provider practices in low-income and middle-income countries. BMJ Global Health, 6(1-11). Web.