Stop, Look and Listen: Creating a SMART CE Hub for the Healthcare Team

Health Care Problem: As a healthcare system, we are committed to responding to the changing needs of our patients and members of the healthcare team by delivering continuing education (CE) that is timely and relevant. Based on stakeholder interviews and surveys, there was a need to develop a unified platform to support the CE needs of our learners. Our current learning management system lacked the ability for our learners to systematically identify content related to their needs by profession. In addition, licensure requirements are constantly changing, and healthcare providers are overwhelmed with patient care duties with limited time to fulfill CE requirements.  In collaboration with our Performance Improvement (PI) Department, our Continuing Professional Education (CPE) program developed a CE Hub using an innovative and homegrown SMART tool, which consists of five phases (Scope, Measure, Analyze, Rethink and Track). The expected outcome of our PI project was to increase our IPCE activities by 50%, specifically targeting healthcare priorities that were identified through state licensure and board requirements.

Educational Strategy: Utilizing a train-the-trainer approach, our CPE team participated in a facilitator training program, which consisted of a hybrid and longitudinal curriculum (live classes, interactive online modules, and a capstone PI project) as part of our own professional development training. We learned about the use of a homegrown SMART tool that has of five phases:1) Scope phase-we clearly defined the problem and goals through active listening with interviews and surveys, and set the foundation to ensure the engagement of leadership, stakeholders and our CPE team; 2) Measure phase- we determined the critical needs of our learners (i.e. licensure and board requirements by profession), identified key process metrics and performance indicators for data collection; 3) Analyze phase - we identified the causes of the problem we were looking to solve and determined the strategy for improvement design critical to successful planning and execution of our project; 4) Rethink phase- we evaluated the effectiveness of solutions, barriers and challenges and updated our implementation plans as needed; and 5) Track phase, we determined sustainability, refined solutions and dissemination plans. Methodologies that were utilized for feedback included stakeholder interviews and surveys.

Patient-Level Outcome(s) Measured: The project is a work-in-progress and we have increased our IPCE activities to 25% to date with positive feedback from stakeholders. By 'stopping, looking and listening', we were able to develop a CE hub, a unified education platform, that is able to support the ongoing CE needs of the members of our interprofessional teams, drive better patient outcomes and advance health.