Promising Practices in Healthcare Workforce Development
One of the major goals of the Learning Communities is to highlight opportunities for collaboration and/or replication of promising practices in order to help healthcare providers (and their support organizations) maintain a skilled workforce.
The following is a list of programs in Mid Michigan which have been highlighted and shared by the Healthcare Learning Community. Please click on the links to read comments from the individual organizations, or to visit their website.
Please suggest other organizations and programs in Michigan (or beyond) who are successfully using innovative approaches to build the pipeline of skilled workers in healthcare careers. Add your thoughts at the bottom of this page: log in to add suggestions (click "edit" in the upper left corner, type "password.lc", add your comments, and then click "save".)
Healthcare Learning Community
Promising Practices
"Health Care's My Bag" Career Kit
To view "Health Care's My Bag" Career Kit PowerPoint Presentation click here. For further reference visit Michigan Works! and the Internet Based System for Clincal Placement.
Genesee Early College:
Genesee Early College is a five-year "hybrid" Early College High School for students in grades 9-13. Operated by the Genesee Intermediate School District (a regional educational service organization servicing all Genesee County school districts) and housed on the University of Michigan-Flint's campus, the school is predicated on the idea that young people--especially those who are underserved or at risk--are capable of pursuing serious scholarly work much earlier than previously thought. Students enrolled in Genesee Early College are provided with the necessary scaffolding and support to successfully pursue a college-preparatory 9th and 10th grade curriculum, as well as exposure to careers in the health professions. Upon achieving mastery in specific content areas, usually by eleventh grade, students begin dually enrolling in University of Michigan-Flint courses for joint credit at the high school and college level, following an individually-tailored Educational Development Plan. During their 11th, 12th and 13th grade years, students are provided with field experiences, job shadowing, and other academic and career opportunities at regional health care facilities. Ultimately, students generally graduate with their high school diplomas (awarded by GISD), valuable career pathway experiences and skills, and up to 60 transferable credits towards their undergraduate degrees and continued matriculation opportunities at the University of Michigan-Flint. A central purpose of Genesee Early College is to prepare its students for academic and professional careers in the health sciences. For more information, visit the Genesee Early College website.
Internet Based System for Clinical Placement
Students are frequently faced with long waiting lists for clinicals. This wait list is often directly related to a lack of clinical sites for training. The result is a shortage of graduating nurses. Automating clinical scheduling is one method that has been used across the country to help improve on this situation.
Clinical scheduling is often a very time-consuming process that requires a significant amount of communication between hospitals, long-term care providers, training centers, colleges, and universities within a large region. Anywhere from 10 to as many as 50 organizations need to be communicating together to maximize the number of clinicals within their region. Automating clinical scheduling saves clinical coordinators and schedulers an enormous amount of time, and it is a proven solution to increasing clinicals through organization, teamwork, and schedule sharing.
In 2005, the East Central Michigan RSA for Health Care worked with Spicer Group, Inc. to streamline the nursing clinical placement process. An Internet-based system was developed that has been embraced by numerous healthcare employers including hospitals, long-term care facilities, colleges, universities, and training providers. For more information, visit the Clinical Placement website.
Burcham Hills Alzheimer's Nursing Certification Program
Burcham Hills Retirement Community and the Lansing Community College (LLC) are committed partners in bettering the healthcare system and care of the elderly in the greater Lansing area. The Career Ladder Nursing Program has a extensive relationship with Burcham Hills as first year LCC students have clinical experiences at the retirement community during the Fundamentals of Nursing course, and then again in the last year of the nursing program through a curriculum for LPN and RN long-term care caregivers who provide care to dementia or Alzheimer’s residents in skilled facilities. The professional healthcare giver curriculum will focus on specific care related to individuals with dementia or Alzheimer’s in a skilled care facility to include communication techniques and methods, environmental safety requirements, use of reminiscence and diversion therapies, physical activity and other unique strategies. The design and delivery will include face-to-face, online and hands on. In addition, LCC will develop a curriculum for caregivers of the dementia or Alzheimer’s patient that resides in a home environment. The home caregiver curriculum will be designed to include personal and safety care; along with, communication techniques, respite resources and assistance to aide the caregiver in making the decision to move the patient to a skilled care facility.
Moreover, LCC Nursing Curriculum committee has identified a need for leadership in education in the Licensed Practical Nurse Curriculum. This need for leadership education at this level is related to the changing work environment for LPN. The LPN is no longer working in acute care settings; LPN’s are the primary caregiver in long-term care. This changing work environment requires shift in nursing curricula across the state to include leadership experiences to occur in the work environment where LPN’s will practice. LCC is proposing to pilot a leadership course within the LPD curriculum designed for long-term care to include the education related to dementia and Alzheimer’s care.
Burcham Hills Retirement Community and LCC are looking for partners to implement this project. Please visit the Burcham Hills Retirement Community website or email Director Micheal Wolfston at mwolfston@burchamhills.com, Director of Burcham Hills or email Marc Jordon marc@scofesconsulting.com at Scofes & Associates.
Capital Area Healthcare and Education Partnership
The Capital Area Healthcare Education Partnership (CAHEP) program is a collaborative partnership between the public education community and area health care providers engaged in educating high school students to become health care employees for the future. It is the purpose of the Capital Area Healthcare Education Partnership (CAHEP) to provide high school students with direction and exposure to health careers, focusing on developing academic, technical and employability skills, as well as to prepare students to transition into post secondary training and/or health care employment. Students who complete the program will receive high school credit and may be eligible for college credit.
The CAHEP program is an example of a business-education partnership in which students learn and develop academic, technical and employability skills through authentic experiences providing them the necessary skills to succeed in healthcare-related careers. A description of the CAHEP program is available here, or visit the website.
Greater Flint Health Coalition: Flint Healthcare Employment Opportunities
The Flint Healthcare Employment Opportunities (FHEO) Project is a healthcare sector workforce development project, with the Greater Flint Health Coalition serving as the lead agency. The purpose of the FHEO Project is to create sustainable employment and to promote career advancement in the healthcare industry by working with health industry employers to restructure their hiring, retention and promotional practices for entry-level healthcare workers.
The FHEO trains residents of the greater Flint community for entry-level healthcare positions which, in many cases, offer medical benefits and a living wage as well as fill job vacancies. In this way, the project serves to improve the health status of the residents of the Flint area as well as improve the quality and cost effectiveness of the healthcare system in the community by providing well trained staff. For more information, visit the FHEO website, or read their project description here.
Hurley Medical Center: Career Exploration Program
Hurley Medical Center's incumbent worker program was instituted to encourage current employees to progress and thrive in the healthcare industry. This program is geared towards service, clerical and maintenance employees who are carefully screened for eligibility - including attendance, interest and committment level, and current job performance rating. The incumbent worker program employs a variety of techniques including lectures, job shadowing, mentoring and presentations.
Hurley endeavors to expose participants to various "hot jobs" in healthcare; increase job satisfaction, productivity and morale; aid employees in identifying and growing their own skills and abilities; and plan for future job mobility -- thus offering career longevity and advancement opportunities. For more information, visit the Hurley Medical Center website or view a presentation about this program.
Healthcare Innovation Discussion Board:
Log in to discuss: click "edit" in upper left corner, type "password.lc", scroll back to this section and type in your comments, click "save". Thank you!
Examples of Promising Practices: Please share your thoughts on other organizations and programs in Michigan (and beyond) whose approaches are innovating healthcare workforce development.
Ideas of innovative programs to highlight, share, and consider replicating:
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