BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN NURSING:

NCM 107B RLE

RLE MODULE RLE UNIT WEEK
3 15 17

Staff Development / CPE

 Read course and laboratory unit objectives

 Read study guide prior to class attendance
 Read required learning resources; refer to course
unit terminologies for jargons
 Participate in weekly discussion board (Canvas)
 Answer and submit course unit tasks

At the end of this unit, the students are expected to:

1. Demonstrate knowledge regarding importance of staff development in carrying out unit goals.
2. Identify needed knowledge and skill to sustain nursing practice
3. Understand accountability of nurses with regard to how they will supply themselves with needed
knowledge and skills.
4. Demonstrate that having in a position with higher level of accountability means a higher level of
responsibility on how their staff will be supplied with needed knowledge and skills.
5. Have the knowledge of what a career planning is.

Marquis, BL., Huston, CJ., Leadership Roles and Management Functions in Nursing Theory and
Application, 8th Ed., 2015, Philadelphia, PA, Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
To facilitate the practice of students’ web navigation skills, the following rules must be
implemented:

1. The use of search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo) are allowed.

2. Use navigation techniques as mentioned in the required readings.
3. Students must submit this accomplished worksheet through Canvas upload, Canvas Inbox,
or email.

STAFF DEVELOPMENT AND CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

The staff’s knowledge level and capabilities are a major factor in determining the number of staff
required to carry out unit goals. The better trained and more competent the staff, the fewer staff
required. Staff development then is a cost-effective method of increasing productivity.

Education and training are two components of staff development that occur after an employee’s
indoctrination. Early staff development emphasized orientation and in-service training. In the last 20
years, however, other forms of education have become common in healthcare organizations.
Management development, certification classes, and continuing education courses to meet
relicensure requirements are now a part of many staff development programs.

TRAINING VS EDUCATION

Managers have a greater responsibility for seeing that staff are properly trained than they do for
meeting educational needs.
Training may be defined as an organized method of ensuring that people have knowledge and skills
for a specific purpose and that they have acquired the necessary knowledge to perform the duties
of the job. The knowledge may require increased affective, motor, or cognitive skills. It is expected
that acquiring new skills will increase productivity or create a better product.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

Most education department on the organization chart are depicted as having staff or advisory
authority rather than line authority. Staff positions do not have line authority, education personnel
generally have little or no authority over those for whom they are providing educational programs.
Likewise, the unit manager has no authority over personnel in the education department.

Because of the ambiguity of overlapping roles and difficulties inherent in line and staff positions,
educating and training employees may be neglected. If staff development activities are to be
successful, it is necessary to delineate and communicate the authority and responsibility for all
components of education and training.

Other difficulties arising from the shared responsibility among managers, personnel department staff,
and educators for the indoctrination, education and training of personnel are a frequent lack of cost-
effectiveness evaluation and little accountability for the quality and outcomes of the educational
activities.

The following suggestions can help overcome the difficulties inherent in a staff development system
in which there is shared authority:

 The nursing department must ensure that all parties involved in the indoctrination, education,
and training of nursing staff understand and carry out their responsibilities in that process.
 If the nursing department is not directly responsible for the staff development department,
there must be input from the nursing department in formulating staff development policies
and delineating duties.
 An advisory committee should be formed with representatives from top-middle, and first-level
management; staff development and the human resource department. Representatives from
all classifications of employees receiving training or education should be part of this
committee.
 Accountability for various parts of the staff development program must be clearly
communicated.
 Some method of determining the cost and benefits of various programs should be used.

ASSESSING STAFF DEVELOPMENT

Although managers may not be involved in implementing all educational programs, they are
responsible for identifying learning needs. If educational resources are scarce, staff desires for
specific educational programs may need to be sacrificed to fulfill competency and new learning
needs. Because managers and staff may identify learning needs differently, an educational needs
assessment should be carried out before developing programs.

Many staff development activities are generated to ensure that workers at each level are competent
to perform the duties assigned to the position. Competence is defined as having the abilities to meet
the requirements for a particular role. Health-care organizations use many resources to determine
competency. State board licensure, national certification, and performance review are some of the
methods used to satisfy competency requirements (Huston, 2014a). Other methods are self-
administered checklists, record audits, and peer evaluation. Many of these methods are explained
in Unit VII. For staff development purposes, it is important to remember that in the case of deficient
competencies, some staff development activity must be implemented to correct the deficiencies.
Another learning need that frequently affects health-care organizations is the need to meet new
technological and scientific challenges. Much of a manager’s educational resources will be used to
meet these new learning needs.

Some organizations implement training programs because they are faddish and have been
advertised and marketed well. Educational programs are expensive, however, and should not be
undertaken unless a demonstrated need exists.
EVALUATION OF STAFF DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES

Because staff development includes participation and involvement from many departments, it may
be very difficult to control the evaluation of staff development activities effectively. It would be very
easy for the personnel department, middle-level managers, and the education department to “pass
the buck” among one another for accountability regarding these activities.

In addition, the evaluation of staff development must consist of more than merely having class
participants fill out an evaluation form at the end of the class session, signing an employee handbook
form, or assigning a preceptor for each new employee. Evaluation of staff development should
include the following four criteria:

 Learner’s reaction. How did the learner perceive the orientation, the class, the training, or the
preceptor?
 Behavior change. What behavior change occurred as a result of the learning? Was the
learning transferred? Testing someone at the end of a training or educational program does
not confirm that the learning changed behavior. There needs to be some method of follow-up
to observe if behavior change occurred.
 Organizational impact. Although it is often difficult to measure how staff development activities
affect the organization, efforts should be made to measure this criterion. Examples of
measurements are assessing quality of care, medication errors, accidents, quality of clinical
judgment, turnover, and productivity.
 Cost-effectiveness. All staff development activities should be quantified in some manner. This
is perhaps the most neglected aspect of accountability in staff development. All staff
development activities should be evaluated for quality control, impact on the institution, and
cost-effectiveness. This is true regardless of whether the education and training activities are
carried out by the manager, the preceptor, the personnel department, or the education
department.

1. You are the Chief Nurse of a prestigious private hospital in your area. The hospital
administrator had called your attention and asked you to create a staff development and
continuing professional education to address the common nursing practice errors:
A. Medication Errors
B. Patient Falls
C. Needle Stick Injuries
D. Non-compliance to Infection Control
E. Charting Errors
F. Referring a patient to their Attending Physician without the right information on hand
G. Failure to Prioritize
 2. Create an ANNUAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT PLAN by selecting topics, new trends and
issues in nursing practice, current researches, and deliver them thru lectures, seminars,
return demonstrations, or even mentoring or anything you have in mind that will address the
common nursing practice errors, suffice your staff nurses of skills and knowledge and
contribute to their career development.

3. Follow this template: Ex.

ANNUAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR 2021

MONTH TOPIC METHOD OF DELIVERY
Lecture /
January Bed Bath
Return Demonstration
Research Topic: The Effects of
February Seminar
Gluthatione on Kidneys
March Personal Grooming Shadowing
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

Date Completed:
Date Submitted:

Marquis, BL., Huston, CJ., Leadership Roles and

Management Functions in Nursing Theory and
Application, 8th Ed., 2015, Philadelphia, PA,
Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins