Page 386 - CEO Orientation

Domain #7: Learning and Development: What is valued and fundamental to learning
and development?

Without exception, staff and leadership at all three sites valued the education funding provided for
extended learning and were passionate about not losing this important benefit.

As well, many noted that they were excited to see what the other hospitals offered regarding staff and
leadership learning and development and felt this was a great opportunity to build on the best practices
of each organization’s current programs.

Concerns were raised regarding the intimidation factor of being part of an academic research institution
and the possibility of accountabilities changing as a result of an overarching academic mission. It will be
important to address the advantages of this association while at the same time putting to rest any
myths and inaccurate perceptions.

Recommendations:

1. Building relationships and learning across sites: From a cultural perspective, this could be one
of the integration’s early first wins. The concept of blending L&D across the three sites also
provides an opportunity for bringing staff and leadership together to begin building unified
teams. A recommended first step would be to develop a team made up of L&D representatives
from each site to evaluate current program offerings, then choose one or two programs to offer
to cross-site participants.

2. Leveraging current best practices: Each hospital has a series of L&D offerings for staff and
leadership with some exceptional best-practice approaches and concepts. A first step for the
integration project team, would be to conduct a review of each site’s offerings and perform a
gap analysis highlighting the best practices from each organization as well as the areas for
development.

3. An opportunity for innovation: In addition to traditional L&D courses and programs, there were
discussions during the assessment as to this being the opportunity to “switch things up” and
review accountabilities. These opportunities are worthy of follow up. For example, why not
empower and train a front-line person to do scheduling freeing up managers’ time to apply to
more critical work? Or why not have a non-nurse health care professional fill a CLM role?

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