JCR will develop a course for nurses, physicians, and other clinical professionals who work in hospitals to improve communication about patient safety practices. The course will include presentation materials, trainer guidelines, group and individual participant materials, and professionally produced video scenarios. JCR will collaborate with trainers at the beta site hospitals to develop the course based on lessons learned from the root cause analysis of errors reported to the Joint Commission’s Sentinel Event Database; Crew Resource Management training materials; adult learning, organizational development and communication theories and techniques; and results from evaluation and measurement at beta-test hospitals.
The course will include the following components:
- Trainer and participant materials with complete instructions for their use, implementation strategies, additional resources, and training methods.
- Videos/DVDs that demonstrate common scenarios and the communication skills required in these situations. The four videos will include interactions among different health care professionals, with particular emphasis placed on the communication between nurses and physicians, between junior- or senior-ranked professionals, and among peers.
- An introductory video will use interviews with nationally-recognized patient safety leaders and clinical and administrative executives from a variety of health care organizations to define the key characteristics of an organization that embeds patient safety in its culture, and the impact of communication on patient safety.
- Materials for individual, self-paced instruction that focus on the identification of communication styles and the application of style-based techniques for better communications.
- Group learning materials that use simulation to practice communication skills, and debriefings to discuss where communication skills were supportive or problematic.
- Materials that leaders can use to evaluate their organization’s use of elements that are essential to support transparent communication, and that can be used effect change that will bring maximum benefit from their investment in communication skills training.
- A seminar for trainers (train-the-trainer) that covers the program materials and presentation skills.
- Online exchanges for coordinators to discuss strategies and offer feedback, share stories and for JCR to provide updates, additional resources and to test training materials.
- Tool to plan strategies to spread skill development throughout a hospital.
- Evaluation tools to determine pre- and post-training attitudes and perceived barriers for communication, training satisfaction, and measures of effectiveness.
- Continuing education credits for trainers and participants.