Educators - Need Your Help

llg, PhD, RN · Oct 2, 2003

Hi, Suzy,

My boss would probably shoot me if I sent you a copy of some of my old department's plans, but I feel comfortable telling you what the format and contents are. Each of our departments do one every year.

Ours are in outline form and include brief summaries under the following headings.

I. Purpose and Scope (1 sentence overview of what the educational activities of the department are)

II. Objectives (We listed 3-4 each year, eg. "provide a thorough orientation that includes blah blah blah")

III. Resources (A. Personnel B. Facilities & Equipment)

IV. Needs assessment (listing of methods we use)

V. Programs (A. On-going programs B. Special projects planned for the up-coming year)

VI. Evaluation (all the different ways we use to evaluate)

VII. Documentation (how we document all educational activities)

In my hospital, each department updates its plan every year -- and both the unit educators and the department director sign off on it. The plan plus summaries of each program goes in a big notebook. We keep a separate notebook for each unit, each year. So ... when accreditors come, we can simply show them the notebooks on the shelves and they can review our educational activities for the past several years. The system works well.

I hope this helps,

llg

ceecel.dee, MSN, RN · Oct 2, 2003

Originally posted by Susy K
Hi,
We will be having a site visit from an agency that our hospital has applied for an award from. I have been asked from my director to meet with this group to answer questions for them relating to our educational offerings. My director suggested that I have a written "education plan" that describes our department and what we do.

Are any of you familiar with this? What exactly is an education plan? Would this be something similar to a conceptual model?

Any and all suggestions welcome.

Include your departments mission and vision statements.

Include your departments P & P, as in your objectives, orientation schedule and format, criteria for competency, methods and frequency for educating and giving feedback.

Showing some flexibility in the learners desired methods of learning/demonstrating competency might be nice. For instance, I put out the years competency requirements every Sept. so that the nurses have the options of being "signed off" on any of the listed skills by actually performing it on/with a patient, on-the-job (witnessed by a qualified peer), by giving some type of education to their peers on the topic (includes step by step procedure with why's and how's included, along with recent references...the performance shy sometimes like this, but it is not frequently used), or in the skills lab I provide, with stations and all supplies needed to perform the task, towards the end of the year (the nurses like and use this the most).

If you are involved in following up on orientee's, include your schedule for evals, and how you are tracking progress/productivity/socialization/professionalism.

Good luck!

Q. · Oct 3, 2003

Very helpful - thank you! :)