COMMON QUESTION for ALL TEAMS, by Allison Rossett

Will was surprised when he got an email requesting his presence in Marcia's office. When he gave her the document, Marcia had thumbed through it, read the exec summary and turned right to the recommendations. She'd nodded with satisfaction.

So Will figured he was finito with that project. No problem if she wants to chat, he thought to himself, noting that he and Marcia were real tight.

Marcia wasn't alone when he was eventually shown into her office. Sitting at her large conference table was a woman who looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place her. She had a copy of his assessment in front of her.

Marcia said, "This is Dr. Gwen von Hinghis. Gwen heads up Education, Training, Technology and Performance Systems for headquarters in Chicago. You've probably heard about their brilliant work on EPSS for customer service. Gwen made all that happen and the CEO has come to depend upon her. Maybe you've seen her articles in professional journals? I asked her take a peek at your needs assessment. I knew you wouldn't mind."

Gwen got right to the point: "Well, Will, I can see what you were driving at here and I appreciate the array of sources you tapped, but I think you kind of let the people at Cadaceus run the needs assessment and dump what they wanted on you. They expressed joy and sorrow about Roberta, but I don't think you got all the information you need. And if you're going to do much training, did you get at what it is that different employees need to know and be concerned about? To create all that training, bet you'd have to do still another needs assessment.

Marcia tells me you're a recent PhD so I'm surprised that your inquiry doesn't reflect more cognitive and constructivist perspectives. Surely that makes a difference in needs assessment, don't you think? Could you take another whack at it with some of this in mind? I know that Marcia will appreciate it, and I will too.

This thing has to be right, you know. We're eager to see where you get to. Right, Marcia?"

Will was stunned. He'd enjoyed nothing but kudos in his career, and now this. Well, he was going to think about it and tackle it. Where could he turn for help? He had a little money for consultation...

Help Will. Strengthen his study in ways that reflect your opinions of what he did and didn't do PLUS Gwen's concerns.

From: Consultant

To: Will

Will: Overall, I believe that the needs analysis conducted acquired information and attitudes that provided a range of different views on the problem. As you stated and from all the documentation that I've read, it appears that the issues range beyond training needs into the areas of needing a greater amount of true teamwork to occur in the hospital and needing to improve attitudes and perceptions towards the technology used in the hospital.

In this needs analysis, You identified specific areas where instruction was needed; in order to help change attitudes and in the use of the RBA. I did understand that you did not delve further into details about the design of this training, as that would be taken care of in the second phase - the design of the instruction.

Some suggestions:

• Regarding training on the RBA:

  Spend some time observing how the machine is used by different individuals and ask them some questions about their use of it to find out more about the easy and difficult areas of use. This information will help develop the training, additionally it will help you develop some cognitive tools as part of the training to help guide the users in the optimal use of the RBA. The potential you present of developing a simulation of the system could provide trainees with not only practice on use of the system, but also practice on the procedures surrounding the use of the system, such as printing and filing reports and all other pre and post RBA use requirements. A constructivist design that would create this real world environment would also allow you to simulate emergency situations with time constraints such as what occurs during power outages.

• Regarding the attitudinal training:

  Look further to determine whether you need to develop an informational CBT product to show staff how technology is beneficial to improving hospital care. This may end up costing a great amount of money for the hospital and a large amount of staff time. Many of the attitudinal goals you are aiming for can be handled in other, more informal ways, such as through informational talks, off-the shelf informational videos and other resources.

SPECIFIC QUESTION for GMU TEAM, by Sandy Balli

Marcia and Dr. Gwen von Hinghis have reviewed Will's needs assessment and noted that he recommended training for all hospital staff on "Using Technology to Improve Patient Care." Because Marcia is tough with an eye to the bottom line (and von Honghis is even more tough), they questioned this recommendation indicating that many hospital employees are not involved in direct patient care (e.g., human resources, housekeeping, gift shop employees, groundskeepers). Can Will justify the need to train ALL employees about patient care technology? If so, how?

Perhaps I should have been more explicit in my recommendation for this area. Of course, it would be neither cost effective nor necessary to train all hospital staff in "Using Technology to Improve Patient Care." Rather, I propose only training those who are directly involved in patient care. This training would, therefore, not include staff involved in such areas as human resources, housekeeping, etc. Once this training is developed, it would also be utilized for new patient care staff as part of their orientation training.

I would like to note that although the non-patient care staff would not be involved in this particular training, I do feel that their attitudes towards using technology in the hospital can be important as they do interact with patients and are members of the community. Therefore, this audience would still be included as part of the target audience in the proposed solution (to the second gap) involving education and communication outlined in my needs analysis.

Will