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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Health Care

They are talking about this topic: Needs & Challenges in Continuing Education

 

The quotes below are about this issue:
Incumbents need additional training in soft skills areas, such as leadership, supervision, interpersonal communication, cross-generational communication, adaptation, customer service, and goal-setting. Additional training is also needed to enhance technical skills. This includes topics such as basic computer programs and technology, electronic medical records, dementia care, and ER care. Additional refresher courses are also needed for nurses re-entering the workforce.

Employer Quote Sort descending Region
"Employer 1: I think you adjust the lines of the supervision and delegation. We use the two-year degree people, too, so if there was some way they could go back—not necessarily toward a BSN, but learning how to do delegation and supervision type skills.

Employer 2: Yeah, so maybe it's just a couple classes.

Employer 1: They might still be an LPN, but they would have stronger leadership skills.

Employer 2: Yeah, so they can just get stronger at those pieces they might have gotten if they continued, but they don't have to go do the whole degree."
Metro
"Employer 1: There's a rapid rate of change in our organization, and I'm assuming that's happening in other health care organizations as well. And for people to be able to adapt to that change is not a bad thing. Change is a good thing. And, so, it's somewhat of a mindset. I think that as people have been on, let's say, electronic health records longer, they can and do learn. And it's not the new students that have trouble with technology, it's the existing employees because the new physicians, the new nurses, they are like: click, click, click. All good to go.

Employer 2: More of the incumbent work force—they could use some technology development.

Employer 1: But as your organization advances with an electronic record, they pick that up. You know people can do that."
Central
"Additional in-services on how to deal with folks with dementia and things like that would be helpful." Northwest
"All of our charting and stuff is electronic. Everything that we do is computerized. If they want to know what's happening in our organization, they need to go onto our internet to look. And, you know, they just want to be back on the floor. They want to be with the patient, touching and caring. But it's through the computer—it's how they get their communications, discharges, everything, it's all done through email and technology." Northwest
"Another thing I noticed was that some nurses—and other people—who have been out of the workforce for a while, have come back because of the economy. So, there should be refresher courses for LPNs and RNs who have been out and who want to come back—or even for radiologist or laboratory technicians. And there aren't those refresher courses. I called many places to see if there was such a thing, and I couldn't find any." Northwest
"Earlier we were talking about the sensitivity between generations. I think sensitivity and understanding among folks—there are all kinds of differences, whether it's generational differences or cultural differences or age differences. And age difference beyond just the fellow co-workers, but also the ages of patients, that sensitivity as our population's getting older, so understanding their needs. We are much more of a mixed society, perhaps less so in the northeast here, but nonetheless there are different cultures, different backgrounds, and different traditions coming together. And so any help that fosters inclusivity—that fosters an appreciation of differences and builds that into a curriculum—I think would be a powerful thing." Northeast
"For the hospital side of the organization, our nurses cover the emergency room and everything else on the hospital floor. And, for a lot of nurses, that can be very scary when they're coming out of a program. They may have gotten a broad brush, but they might not have that much actual experience. And so you start seeing a hole in the emergency room care. Now, obviously, they're not thrust into that role as a charge nurse, but it's still scary for some of them." Northwest
"For us, it goes back to the leadership and communication. A lot of them—we have really good nurses—and we lose them because they don't want to deal with the other employees. They don't want to deal with families yelling at them. So, it's not the clinical piece, but I do think that we struggle a lot of times with them taking the leadership role." Central
"From a lab perspective, I'm fortunate because I have very tenured staff, 30 years. A lot of them will retire on me eventually. It's getting them to think about goals. They don't have a goal. They just come to work and do their job because this is just a job. So, it's getting them to see that goals are important, even if the goal is simply sharing their knowledge. I keep trying to figure out how to get some of our more specialized folks to share their knowledge so that those new staff, those new students, can get up to speed quicker. But that's really hard to harness—to have them think about what needs to be in a procedure. What can you put in a procedure? It's so specialized you have to see it to understand it." Metro
"I think almost any health care position could probably use more training on basic computer skills—whether newly-hired people, people who've been with us a few years, or the longer-term staff. I think you could just never go wrong with that because, as we've said, everything is becoming more and more computerized. So, I think that the more comfortable people feel with their computer skills, the better it is for everybody.

Question: And this is part of the trend toward electronic records and such?

Employer: Yes. There's always a new program to learn. It's even how people clock in and how they ask for vacation time. Everything is computerized. So, if you have a group of people who are paralyzed by the idea of that, then it just makes it difficult. People can always get over that, there's just a little more training required."
Northeast
"I think being a member in the health care team—it's not about the nurses, the doctors, the laboratory people, the pharmacy people—we all, you know, all the way to the people that are doing the laundry, need to understand that we all are intertwined together and are part of a team. So, we are trying to do that internally, to say, 'You are important,' to all levels of staff. And we're working on it, but it's hard. It's hard for them. Some of their salaries are a lot less than the salaries of the RNs. And do they do a lot less for their degrees? No, not necessarily. They have to keep up on new technology and testing, just like anybody else." Central
"I'm going to say communication. If you look at cause analysis of when things don't go well, one of the items that seems like it's always there is lack of communication. So, how do we increase our comfort level with that skill? How do we get more comfortable with that?" Central
"It might be a good thing to have generational training. We have so many generations that are represented in the workforce, and everyone thinks so very differently. So, I think, to help the new generation understand what the next generation is thinking, and what the generation after that is thinking, so that when everybody goes in, that you're not just thinking about it from your own center. Explaining that, when you go into work, this is what the expectation is of your manager because this is how their generation is thinking, and this is how this other generation is thinking, and this is what your generation is thinking. I think that would be good for managers and leadership to take, too, to maybe understand what some of the new RNs are thinking. And not necessarily because they don't have the same expectation and are somehow going to get to the same point, but they may understand how to better communicate. So, it's just trying to understand how other people are thinking. Why it is that they're thinking what they're thinking? It's trying to have a better understanding of where each generation is coming from." Northeast
"Looking long-term, you're looking at that employee being an employee for life and forming a partnership. You're probably looking at some of the leadership. Are they going to be a clinical care supervisor on their unit? How can you train them to get them to a higher level of the clinical ladder—trying to move them up through the different phases of that ladder as well as management?" Northwest
"Part of that demographic is that we are getting some of the older workers, but our technology is advancing. They don't need just the clinical training, they need the technology training, too." Central
"So, maybe we could be thinking about ways to get at these capabilities—to have good conversations, communication skills, and cross-generational things—from an incumbent worker training perspective. [MnSCU college] is having those conversations with health care employers all the time, so..." Southeast
"Some of it's the computers. And some of it's just the equipment that they are using now that maybe wasn't used before." Central
"The latest trend in health care is customer service. And, you know, when I became a nurse, it wasn't to provide customer service. But now that's the majority of my job." Metro
"To get to other things we are talking about, for instance, to build teamwork—how do you pull them together? Where do you find the time and the resource to get these other things accomplished?" Central
"We have a number of employees that have been with us for 15 or 20 years, and they need the technical end of it. Everything is becoming computerized and that presents challenges." Northwest
"We're seeing that some of the nurses that have been here longer find the technological changes to be a big thing. Like, we changed our patient medical records a few years ago, and when we did that, it was really a challenge for some of our nurses." Metro