OJT, that what we have been doing for years and it is still the best method, can't do the job you have been assigned catch the next plane home. Classrooms cannot replicate actual situations and never will.

It sure gets my vote!

But don't forget that JoLee is talking about training clinical equipment users (I think)! To be more specific, she is enquiring about policies to do with training the trainer, and stuff like that. What have you got?

10 TRAINER GETS TRAINED
20 TRAINER TRAINS STAFF
30 STAFF MEMBER WANTS TO BECOME A TRAINER
40 TRAINER TRAINS STAFF MEMBER
50 GOTO 20

... see any bugs there?

If the TRAINER needs training before training others is that not like the blind leading the blind.
We still have the situation here, were pass marks are adjusted to ensure that enough people pass the course, and these people will become the teachers of the future, diluting the education in the process. Why not utilise the company specialists for training and send people to the manufacturer for training?

Don't forget we're talking about training users here, not biomeds.

And on the "dumbing down" issue ... any course that I was in charge of have would always have a few failures. Why? Just to encourage the rest!

That is, if high standards aren't set ... what value is the training? In fact, why bother at all?

Sorry if people get fed up with me mentioning the army (heck, why should I apologise?) ... but on some courses, no-one passed. And there were many courses where only one or two (out of many who started out) passed muster. I remember a case where two guys were booted off in the last month of an 18-month course (that certainly made the rest of us buck up a bit)! Standards were never dropped just because the raw material was lacking in some regard. That's what maintaining high standards is all about! How's that for a Quality System?

Of course, that sort of thing flies in the face of official policy in our wonderful Nanny State; where no-one fails, and even the dumbest of the dumb, and the obviously ill-suited, can strive on to several levels of magnitude beyond their natural competence. Pathetic is the word that comes to mind!

If anyone has been down the route of getting an equipment manufacturer or an outside agency to provide a sustained training programme it gets extremely expensive, and training may not always be to standard.
Another way of looking at it is looking at core, functional and equipment specific/proficiency in order to set the level. However that means responsibility for the decision needs to fall somewhere-and thats where the nanny state says 'you can't do that!!, or you can't do this' but we'll pay for someone else to do it. Whinge over.

"Watch one, do one, teach one"!
In this we agree, the reason I posted the topic was because I had been asked by someone in another Trust if there was a policy dictating that we have to train in this way. Getting the medical trainers in from companies to train staff to be trainers is frustrating, and time consuiming and often leads to no one training others anyway! In the Red Cross - we did train the trainer - we got trained once and then trained others, and in that could assess people to go on to train other staff! It worked! BUT sadly we are hemmed in by the guidelines and policies that our employer dictates, and as such we have to work within them. As for the comments about degrees - hmmm!

Lot's of dictating going on there!

A wise old dude once advised me:- "You need to be careful who you work for, as it reflects on your own integrity"!

The Red Cross? Yes, I approve!

Can they not just look at the piece of kit and figure out how it is operated? I have yet to come across a piece of kit (medical or otherwise) that is so poorly designed that it was not apparent how it should be used.
Failing that, read the manual I hear they tell you how to do it.

That's why they've all got university degrees, apparently.

Our rationale here is to have a written procedure for current practice on each piece of kit. Then it's less important who is delivering the training, because the content of the training is defined. This avoids the 'chinese whispers' issue.

In practice, we get the company in to train when equipment is new, then further training is organised between senior nursing staff and critical care techs. The great advantage of getting the company in is, of course, that they bring cake.

Moira