Seminars and Workshops

Community Medical Foundation for Patient Safety

The Community of Competence™ and Foundation for Life

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Seminars, Workshops and Professional Services

Our Foundation presents educational and training Seminars and provides Professional Services to healthcare professionals and support personnel in areas described below.

Seminars and workshops can be specifically designed or customized for individual clients, professional specialty groups or departments, and organizations.

SEMINARS

Our major goal is to inform participants of the current status of high priority topics in healthcare and enable them to make informed decisions about major problems and issues within their organization. Following the seminar, participants will be able to prioritize their problems and concerns and develop various types and levels of plans of action to be implemented. Methods to monitor and evaluate these action plans on a regular basis will be presented.

Teaching methods and underlying organizational theory and behavior incorporate systems thinking, ethics, leadership, creativity, and use of evidence-based practices within the context of a learning, values-driven organization. Our interactive teaching style is designed to stimulate thinking and encourage open communication. Participants will have the opportunity to share their unique tacit and explicit knowledge.

A detailed manual for each seminar contains current literature, pertinent research findings, case studies, illustrations, and current materials in healthcare. Teaching media and methods include PowerPoint presentations, interactive learning exercises, surveys, case studies, and selected topics for discussion.

Seminars vary in length from one hour to a full day. Tuition varies, depending on the length of seminar, size of audience, and location. Seminars are specifically designed to meet your needs and optimize individual and organizational performance.

Seminar topics include:

1. The Healthcare Organization of the 21st Century—Assessment of the human and material resources organizations must acquire and mobilize in order to remain competitive in a rapidly changing, cost-conscious, consumer-driven environment. Topics include building a supportive infrastructure, organizational structure, culture, strategies, systems thinking, and maximization of the individual and collective competencies of the workforce. Techniques to bring about incremental changes in the structure and function of current healthcare organizations are presented. Recommended for all healthcare personnel.

2. Patient-Centered Healthcare—Focus on including and engaging patients and families as partners in their own healthcare and placing the patient at the center of the healthcare team. This humanistic approach incorporates the patient’s current health status, values, beliefs, wishes, and the vital role of the family. The roles healthcare professionals and support staffs play in educating and enabling patients to monitor their own health and take necessary precautions to help ensure their personal safety are presented. Ways to gradually change or modify organizational structure and support systems to ensure a culture of safety are discussed. Recommended for all members of the healthcare team.

3. Leadership in Modern Healthcare—The appropriate, fundamental leadership theories and styles, such as transformational leadership, behavioral characteristics, and personalities of visional learners who can successfully lead and serve the healthcare organization of the 21st century are discussed. Current leadership styles are examined and placed in perspective within the context of the healthcare team and compared to a new concept of modern leadership from the Community of Competence™. Literature and case studies from industries known for their strong, insightful leadership and success stories will be presented. Recommended for healthcare managers, administrators, executives, clinical team leaders, and supervisors.

4. Business Ethics for the 21st Century—A strong, clearly stated code of ethics and professional conduct that is known and demonstrated throughout the organization is imperative. Ethical behavior serves as the fundamental compass for all organizational behavior and operations. Healthcare organizations in particular must continually address the issues of patient’s rights, ethical treatment and care, patient safety, and healthcare quality. These issues will be discussed in depth, along with topics in business ethics and ethical values. Various case studies and practical exercises have been designed to enable participants to evaluate sample codes of ethics within the context of the organization’s values, visions, mission, strategies, and business outcomes. Recommended for all members of the healthcare team.

5. Communities of Competence™ in Healthcare: Building for the Future–- Forming and supporting separate communities of competence is one way leaders maximize the skills, abilities, knowledge, and unique competencies of every employee. Ways to build communities of talented, work-oriented individuals to solve problems or reach a specific goal are presented. Benefits of working in these focused, cohesive communities include greater job loyalty, and higher levels of motivation and productivity due to increased job satisfaction. A working model of the new Community of Competence™ concept will be described and demonstrated. Participants will be involved in designing a Community of Competence™ for their own group, unit, or organization. They will have an opportunity to apply the concept in ways that will help them develop possible solutions to their high-priority problems within the healthcare system. Recommended for all members of the healthcare team, including administrators, health professionals, caregivers, and patients.

6. Preliminary Hazard Identification and Assessment in Healthcare—Useful preventive hazard assessment methods can detect potential risks and dangers in healthcare facilities. Preliminary identification and assessment often are cost-effective by preventing problems and errors. Developed by the systems safety community, these methods for analysis, evaluation, and control can be easily and effectively applied to healthcare settings. Practical step-by-step guided instructions will be given. Recommended for patient safety officers, risk managers, nursing staff, and environmental, health and safety personnel.

7. Safety Reporting Systems for Healthcare—A general survey and detailed discussion of the values, purposes, and outcomes of safety reporting systems for healthcare. In context of individual and organizational learning, selected reporting systems will be evaluated for utility and validity (capturing the data that the system is designed for). Topics include reporting actual incidents and close calls, triage concept for gathering information, and lessons learned from other industries, such as aviation industry. Recommended for patient safety officers, risk managers, nursing staff, and environment, health and safety personnel.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

Our Foundation works with clients and partners to determine methods and techniques that can be developed, implemented, and monitored in order to achieve the most optimum results within a specific time period. Professional services and guidance can be provided in the same topics and content areas as our seminars and/or by our extensive Community of Partners from an array of professional disciplines, industries, and organizations. These topics and content areas are:

1. The Healthcare Organization of the 21st Century

2. Patient-Centered Medicine

3. Leadership in Modern Healthcare

4. Business Ethics for the 21st Century

5. Communities of Competence™ in Healthcare: Building for the Future

6. Preliminary Hazard Identification and Assessment in Healthcare

7. Safety Reporting Systems for Healthcare

Our prime focus is on the true customers of healthcare—patients and their families. Our Foundation supports the humanistic practice of patient-centered medicine and the well-known and accepted guidelines of the Institute of Medicine Reports that healthcare should be delivered in a safe, equitable, timely manner that is efficient and effective. We provide special services to support research and program development and create specialized, hands-on workshops and experiential learning exercises to assess competency, productivity and job satisfaction of individuals in healthcare and to enhance the performance and culture of the healthcare organization.

Research and Program Development

Our Foundation, partners, and associates can provide various services and develop either general or specialty programs in the following areas:

1. Research Study Review—Critical review and evaluation of research proposals related to patient safety, healthcare quality, organizational behavior, leadership, ethics, hazard identification and control, safety reporting systems, and related health topics.

2. Research Study Design—Develop and implement original research studies in patient safety and healthcare quality, collect and analyze data, and report results. For collaborative studies, our Foundation can serve as fiscal agent for grants with minimal indirect and administrative costs.

3. Program Development—General design and development from concept to implementation and evaluation of patient safety program or projects, including promotional and educational materials and campaigns in patient safety, patient safety reporting systems, and training and in-service programs for healthcare personnel.

4. Get Rid of Unused Pharmaceuticals (GROUP) Program—A comprehensive, community-based program to safely collect unused and expired medications from the homes and properly destroy them. This Program comes with a detailed Manual of Procedures (MOP) for planning and implementing every aspect of an unused and expired medications take-back program, including step-by-step procedures, a promotional brochure, educational materials, guidelines for media, recruitment and training of staff and volunteers, standard data collection forms for the Unused and Expired Medicine Registry, evaluation of program, and certification.

5. Certification for Operation and Use of the SKGSM System—A complete training and certification program for users of the new FDA-approved device to measure hand functionality, Sensokinetogram (SKGSM) System including introduction to the System, its components, applications, standard operational and measurement procedures, and basic maintenance. For more information about the SKGSM System, visit www.KadaMedical.com.

Workshops and Experiential Learning Exercises

In addition to the four areas listed below, experiential learning activities that directly involve healthcare professionals are available for leadership, healthcare team building, and in the areas of creativity and innovation, motivation, productivity, and emotional intelligence.

Objective: Participants will be able to analyze their current jobs, their unique role in the organization, and determine how they can develop strategies to achieve their organizational and professional goals.

1. Self-Assessment of Work-Related Competencies—Many people work at half of their full capacity due to poor job placement, insufficient training, or a mismatch between what they do well and their current jobs. Competency is demonstrated in one’s skills, abilities, and tacit and explicit knowledge. The CoreUnique-Expanding model introduced in Dr. Elizabeth Smith’s book, Creating productive organizations: Developing your workforce (St. Lucie/CRC Press, 1995) is used to examine work activities. Participants rank and group their major work activities according to Core, Unique, and Expanding categories. Core work is basic, routine, and repetitive. Unique work is what one is trained or educated to do. Expanding work is interesting, challenging, and self-fulfilling. Computed numeric scores are used to make recommendations for future job assignments and promotion, to identify need for training, and to determine undiscovered competencies. This model has been tested in the workplace. Comparative data on numerous types of jobs are available. Length of workshop ranges from two hours to a full day.

2. Compare Preferred and Actual Work Activities—People often perform work they don’t really enjoy. Productivity and job satisfaction are dramatically improved when the work people actually do and the work they like or prefer to do are closely matched. Participants list their major work activities and rank them on preference and on the amount of time they spend in each work activity. Participants then determine how closely their work preferences and the time spent in their work activities are related. For example, a positive relationship between what they do and what they prefer to do indicate a good “job fit” with high job satisfaction and high personal motivation. A negative relationship shows the reverse. Length of workshop ranges from one to two hours.

3. How is Your Organization?—The fundamental step to make positive organization changes is first to assess the organizational structure, strategy, leadership, ethics, vision, mission, values, and objectives. Too often, key leaders and decision makers in healthcare who want to improve their organization have tunnel vision and focus only certain narrow aspects or incremental features of the system. This systems approach and practical assessment is necessary to determine the internal and external environment, culture, and the readiness to support and sustain short and long-term goals and actions that will further the humanistic and comprehensive practice of patient-centered healthcare. With guidance, participants will learn the basic organizational behavioral and motivational theories, apply them to diagnose and assess their own organization, and present practical and measurable outcomes.

4. Workplace Safety and Patient Safety—No one should go to work in unsafe environments or conditions. When a worker gets hurt or sick, this worker becomes a patient. Whether a person works on a production line or in a healthcare facility, work-related illnesses and injuries exact a heavy toll on productivity and cost. This workshop addresses the issues of workplace safety with updated statistics on illnesses and injuries and draws parallels with current discussion of patient safety. Emphasis is placed on primary prevention, as well as creating work environments that are safe and conducive to high performance and productivity.

5. It’s a “Small World” in Patient Safety—Globalization has influenced our healthcare system with the recruitment, training and employment of health professionals from aboard, the growing demand of medical tourism, and the treatment of patients from foreign countries. Understanding of cultural and social barriers between diverse patient and caregiver populations enhances healthcare quality and patient safety. Participants in this workshop will role play and learn about common misconceptions that are embedded in different health beliefs, values, customs, and health practices.