Childrens Health Care of Altanta
Based in Atlanta, GA, Children's is dedicated to making kids better today and healthier tomorrow. With 532 licensed beds, Children’s employs more than 8,700 employees and manages more than 850,000 annual patient visits at three hospitals and 24 neighborhood locations.
The Challenge
The healthcare industry is faced with doing more with fewer resources. Children's needed to equip their staff with skills to meet the challenges of this changing environment, including leadership training as a key component for both staff development and patient satisfaction. By empowering their nursing staff, Children's believed they could be on the leading edge of transforming healthcare quality and advancing health. Key areas of training: empowerment, communication, peer-to-peer feedback, taking initiative, and accepting accountability in all situations. To reach these goals they needed a leadership program delivering dynamic and trackable training using the latest in web–based technologies and the power of interactive game, simulation, and assessment modules.
The Solution
CD2 Learning offered a blended approach of online training to accommodate the schedules of their 24/7 staff, including face-to-face debriefings to connect nurses to their teams. Featuring content from The Ken Blanchard Companies’ world-class leadership content, Situational Leadership® II, CD2 offered a cloud-based solution scalable to their organization and easily deployed to any device--smartphone, tablet, desktop, laptop--at any location. The training program included supporting materials and highly dedicated support services.
Using SLII's strategic and effective method for managing and developing people, Children’s was able to identify the leadership behaviors they wanted to develop throughout the course of the program. First was to instill a culture of open, productive, and confident communication between nursing staff and physicians, care teams, patients and their families. This would empower them to advocate for patients and participate in the decision-making process. Nursing staff would also exhibit a high degree of emotional intelligence giving them the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, others and groups. The second behavior outcome desired was the ability to give and receive productive feedback. They wanted nurses to self-identity within the organization, not only for taking care of patients, but impacting a system of care. The third desired behavior was increased ownership and accountability of care delivery in partnership with the physician and care team, keeping desired patient outcomes at the forefront. Also important was the ability to manage and lead under stressful conditions and be able to prioritize appropriately.
Children’s believed it was important for nursing staff to ask “why” and demand evidence-based-practice of themselves and the organization. They wanted staff to actively manage their careers and be prepared for advancement whether it was at the bedside or into management roles.
Together with CD2, Children’s developed a program called “Finding the Leader in You” (FLY). The program was tested on one pilot group made up of multi-level nursing staff from bedside nurses to directors. After receiving feedback, the formal FLY program was adjusted to allow four cohorts to go through the program over a two-year period. To supplement the program, seven clinical-specific videos were created that preceded the leadership content. The pre-lesson videos were created using the CD2’s course authoring tool built into the system, Innovator. The videos set the stage for upcoming trainings and identified how leadership lessons applied in a healthcare environment. Children’s selected actual staff members to appear in the videos, which helped increase engagement. At the conclusion of each online lesson, specially-trained staff members hosted live debriefing sessions to round out the comprehensive blended learning process and provided learners a forum for collaboration.
To date, the response has been positive. Staff has embraced the temperament content and is seen applying it in their work groups. Leaders and nurses both articulate the positive benefits of situational self-leadership as a common framework for collaborative communication. Children’s is looking forward to the growth of this program.