Chief Learning Officer - January 2009 - (Page 33) IN PRACTICE PALOMAR POMERADO HEALTH: GENIUS IN SIMPLICITY oint-of-care tests are those quick tests that nurses administer at the bedside. These typically include glucose, urine analysis, pregnancy and others. The learning function at Southern California-based health system Palomar Pomerado Health was asked by the laboratory to design training for nurses to do these tests. The specific challenge was that nurses were not doing the tests the same way at each of Palomar Pomerado Health’s hospitals. Inconsistencies that lead to inaccuracies in a field such as health care are always potentially dangerous. Historically, having nurse educators conduct training had always been the solution. The problem was that they had varying opinions about the “correct” way to do the procedure. Obviously, there were continued discrepancies in the quality of the procedures. Palomar Pomerado Health decided to take a chance with a virtual idea. The learning department’s in-house developer started developing a SCORMcompliant course that had three parts: an educational video, an interactive but virtual hands-on training segment and an assessment. The video demonstrates the procedure, but the most powerful part of the module is the virtual training segment. Using Learnsoft’s LMS, each nurse is able to quickly access the course, and it takes only seven minutes to complete the drag-and-drop virtual procedure in the Flash-based training segment. This is followed by a short quiz. P Palomar Pomerado Health conducted clinical trials of four groups of new nurses at each of its hospitals and observed that all nurses (about 45) completed the course in 14 minutes. None of the nurses had ever physically done the procedure before. No supplies were used during training. A live educator was never required. The nurses took the course on the fly during the workday where they could fit it in. When the results came in, all performed the live procedure flawlessly the first time, without exception. There were so many wins resulting from this training course that it is now a prototype for how Palomar Pomerado Health designs procedural content. The learning function has since produced eight of these of point-of-care test courses and has shared them with a local school of nursing. Generally speaking, nurses often believe that they alone hold the knowledge to train people effectively. By observing this program and orienting to a new way of thinking, Palomar Pomerado Health was able to reorient the behavior and culture of the nurses within the company. This point-ofcare program was a giant leap in convincing stakeholders that a professional learning approach just might be superior to SME knowledge alone. It boosted the perception of the education department in the organization and helped convince doubting SMEs throughout the company. Stephen Inscoe is director of education at Palomar Pomerado Health. Duane Spivey is vice president at Learnsoft. They can be reached at editor@clomedia.com. Act “Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” – Japanese proverb Action is more than just doing something. It’s taking account of what you are doing with the result in mind. It’s observing the result and making an assessment about whether you accomplished the intended result and, if not, what breakdowns occurred and how to overcome them. Learning should not be an episodic event, and neither is the loop. It should never end. This is the point. The OODA loop by design continues through explicit or implicit guidance from one stage to the next. Building learning organizations means we must be strategic in our thinking or face the consequence of being relegated to just training. Putting It All Together “As our case is new, we must think and act anew.” – Abraham Lincoln While the OODA loop originally was conceived for one person, it becomes even more effective when used by many. Information is readily and widely available, which has led us beyond the age of the top-down, command-and-control leadership model to a more decentralized decision-making structure. The result of this is increased velocity with relation to changes in the marketplace. As John Perry Barlow of Merrill Lynch said, “This will not be an easy time for control freaks. It will be a great time for the agile, the small, the cunning and the brave.” With so much information at your fingertips and the rapid speed of business, having a method for teaching everyone in the organization decision-making skills becomes essential. New skills will be needed, new ideas will emerge and new thinking will evolve. This is the time when organizations need their learning executives to step up and lead the way. Using the OODA loop provides learning executives with another tool to understand their organizations and make decisions about where they can provide experiences that give the workforce a competitive advantage. CLO Duane Spivey is vice president at Learnsoft Technology Group. He can be reached at editor@clomedia.com. Chief Learning Officer • January 2009 • www.clomedia.com 33 http://www.clomedia.com
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