#Sample College Research Paper

Training and Development

Why training and education are vital in health care.

Health care is a diagnosis, prevention and treatment of illness, diseases, injury among other mental and physical impairments in people. The deliverers of health care are practitioners in midwifery, allied health, nursing, medicine, pharmacy, optometry, psychology among others health professions. Too offer the best health care to patients, professionals are required to invest in training and education opportunities that will help them to remain updated to knowledge and skills in healthcare. Training and education plays an important role in gauging the proficiency of the health care professionals with the current technologies and interventions.  Training and education also has great implications on issues in the labor market especially in the health care sector.  The high rising societal and changes in technology in this century are changing the healthcare profession. It is crucial for healthcare practitioners to keep pace with this fast changes (Tishelman, 2007).

There are other of reasons why health care practitioners should enroll in training and education: There are increasing demands on healthcare systems, especially because of increased longevity as well as rising expectations of the public especially the patients. The practitioners should also be well educated since the patients are getting a lot of information concerning their health from the internet. This can be challenging if the practitioner is not well equipped with knowledge of his field. Besides the increased information on health, there is also great complexity on treatment alternatives. It’s therefore vital for healthcare practitioners to study critically new developments, to ensure they are equipped with the best evidence and be in a position to advice the patients and justify the advice

 

Explain the importance of measuring competencies.

Competency in workplace is a description of skills, quality, or behavior required for a given job. It is used to measure and define effectiveness of an individual. Competencies normally arranged into a structure that assembles several job roles and the needed capabilities that the holder of the job must acquire or possess in order to execute his job efficiently. Competencies are most popular in large companies. Nevertheless, it allows small businesses to put their focus on important operational and management performance. Measuring competencies in health care sector is very important. This is because it not only helps to define the organizations reputation and position, but it also helps to sustain it (Heaven, 2011).

Measuring competency of health care workers is critical since it helps assess any gaps that could exist between the current workforce and the needs, both current and prospect. Competency assessments further provides critical information about workers which helps the management in putting in place the essential training and development plans that cultivate sustainable talent pools. Measuring of competency helps attain better patients’ treatment since the workers are motivated to give their best performance. Health care organizations get a means to upgrade and retain their valuable workforce through measuring competencies. Measuring of competency is also important in health care organizations since it offers measurable and standardized process for improved control and consistency. Employees also benefit from better organization and intelligibility regarding their expected performance and roles as well as get to identify their own performance connections to that of the health care facility. A competency structure is basically a fair and clear system of development and performance management.

The process for tracking and evaluating training effectiveness

The evaluation and tracking of training creates the remaining section of cycle of training which begins with the recognition of training needs, then establishing of objectives and goes on to the delivery  and design of the training course. Evaluation of training effectiveness determines if the objectives of learning that were set initially are met and if not the deficiency is rectified.

To track and evaluate the effectiveness of healthcare training, the following steps are followed.

Reaction Level: In this level the reaction of a worker towards the training is measured. This stage is vital since it helps the employee to improve the activity of training and development, hence making it more effective. Learning Level: The purpose of this level is to measure what the employees have achieved through the training and development process. The other purpose is to decide to what level the workers increased their skills and knowledge after the training. Behavior Level: This stage measures behavior changes of the worker after the training and development process and how successful the improvement of skill, knowledge and attitudes has equipped them in their role. Result Level: In the results level, the contribution of the training and development to the company is measured. Here it is determined if the training has helped the organization attain its objectives and goals or not. Post Training Evaluation: This is the last stage of evaluating the effectiveness of training sessions.  It is a method of judging the value of the program after the training is over. Here the concentration is on the results. Post Training evaluation determines if the training transfer to the job took place or not (Tulsky, 2007).