Mass General Brigham’s Online College Prep Program
It’s not unusual for hospitals and health systems of any size to offer employees continuing education opportunities – such as brush-up classes to keep workers up to date in their fields, or full degree-granting courses.
And in most cases, many schools, colleges, and universities offer their courses online – either live, known as “synchronous” with students participating in real-time with their professors, or “asynchronous” where students learn on their own schedules, within a certain time frame, with the support guidance and access to subject matter experts as needed.
Potential students familiar with traditional in-person classes, or those new to the education system may wonder if online learning is for them. Will they be able to handle the technology? Do they have the discipline to pursue a class at their own speed?
Training the Trainer: St. Vincent Hospital and the Next Generation of Nurse Mentors
One of the biggest challenges in nursing today is the growing knowledge gap. With Massachusetts having some of the oldest nurses in the U.S. and more of them retiring or otherwise leaving the bedside each year, the decades of experience, insight, and institutional knowledge is leaving too, leaving the role of orienting and mentoring newly graduated nurses and nursing students to nurses barely out of school themselves. Where a unit’s nurses previously had many decades of knowledge and experience, that collective knowledge base is now decreasing.
Cape Cod Healthcare Partnership Apprentice Programs
Cape Cod Healthcare's Michelle Skarbek, Vice President of Human Resources, outlines the many opportunities for internal and external candidates to receive paid training through organization apprenticeships, as well as more advanced training opportunities to continue career growth.
Hospital-University Partnership Allows Newton-Wellesley to Fill OR Positions
Surgical technologists – sometimes known as “scrubs” – are an extraordinarily important part of the operating room team. They oversee all instruments used during a procedure, enforce strict aseptic principles, and help ensure that everything that goes into a patient – sponges, clips, instruments – are removed before the patient is closed. When a surgeon says, “Retractor!” with palm outstretched, it’s usually the surgical tech that places the instrument in his or her hand. Surgical techs have to be nimble to adapt quickly to rapidly changing situations within the OR – and they have to be flexible in terms of scheduling.
And here’s another fact about surgical techs: there’s a dramatic shortage of them in Massachusetts. To address the workforce shortage, Newton-Wellesley Hospital has partnered with Lasell University for an innovative education-training program.
Strategic Collaboration to Grow the Western Massachusetts Workforce with Baystate Health
Baystate Health’s Patty Samra, Vice President, HR Operations, describes Baystate’s strategic plan for workforce development and how they use their plan both internally and externally to identify and train both new and existing talent.
Jason Pacheco, Workforce Planning Consultant/IT Recruiter for Baystate Health, provides several examples of how Baystate develops dual pipelines, focusing on “outside-in” and “inside-up” strategies to train and promote staff at Baystate.
Lawrence General's Workforce Efforts Promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
For Virgilio Velez, R.N., the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Program Officer at Lawrence General Hospital (LGH), building the workforce at his hospital is part of a wider, more far-reaching goal.
“We first looked at what we look like as a hospital, what our patients look like, and what our community looks like, and then we began to define what our workforce challenges were,” he said.
LGH is the largest employer in the City of Lawrence, which has the state’s highest proportion of Latinos. They make up about 80% of the city, and about 70% of the hospital’s patients speak Spanish or a language other than English. The hospital is also an independent facility, not owned and operated by a larger system. It is a high public payer facility and receives relatively lower commercial insurer payments than the state average.
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