Eric Shaver

Human Factors Professional

Best Practices for Health Care Team Training Evaluation

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Weaver, et al. (2011) published an article, entitled “Twelve Best Practices for Team Training Evaluation in Health Care,” in The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety.

The article intends to identify best practices for health care team training evaluation based upon nearly three decades of research and practice. Specifically, the authors state:

“Our goal is not to present a new methodology for evaluation but to distill principles from the science and temper them with the practical considerations faced on the front lines, where evaluation efforts compete with limited human, financial, and time resources” (p. 342).

They go onto clarify that:

“Although the 12 best practices may be perceived as intuitive, they are intended to serve as reminders that the notion of evidence-based practice applies to quality improvement initiatives such as team training and team development as equally as it does to clinical intervention and improvement efforts” (p. 341).

The twelve best practices, arranged according to three phases of training (Planning, Implementation, & Follow-Up), are:

Planning

  • Best Practice 1. Before designing training, start backwards: Think about traditional frameworks for evaluation in reverse.
  • Best Practice 2. Strive for robust, experimental design in your evaluation: It is worth the headache.
  • Best Practice 3. When designing evaluation plans and metrics, ask the experts—your frontline staff.
  • Best Practice 4. Do not reinvent the wheel; leverage existing data relevant to training objectives.
  • Best Practice 5. When developing measures, consider multiple aspects of performance.
  • Best Practice 6. When developing measures, design for variance.
  • Best Practice 7. Evaluation is affected by more than just training itself. Consider organizational, team, or other factors that may help (or hinder) the effects of training (and thus evaluation outcomes).

Implementation

  • Best Practice 8. Engage socially powerful players early. Physician, nursing, and executive engagement is crucial to evaluation success.
  • Best Practice 9. Ensure evaluation continuity: Have a plan for employee turnover at both the participant and evaluation administration team levels.
  • Best Practice 10. Environmental signals before, during, and after training must indicate that the trained KSAs and the evaluation itself are valued by the organization.

Follow-up

  • Best Practice 11. Get in the game, coach! Feed evaluation results back to frontline providers and facilitate continual improvement through constructive coaching.
  • Best Practice 12. Report evaluation results in a meaningful way, both internally and externally.

References

Weaver, S.J., Salas, E., & King, H.B. (2011). Twelve best practices for team training evaluation in health care. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, 37, 341-349.