Do You Get an A+ in Competency Testing?
5 tips to do a better job grading your staff's surgical know-how.
C
ompetencies are
the professional
attributes that
make members of your
staff good at what they do
— the deft touch that guar-
antees first-stick success
when starting IVs, for exam-
ple, or knowing precisely
how to position patients.
But my sense is that most
administrators can do a better job of testing staff competencies. Here
are 5 tips to follow.
Test and retest competencies. Competencies blend knowledge,
attitudes and judgment. They're groups of skills and behaviors
that are identified as performance standards for a particular job. The
skills and understanding needed to become competent at a job devel-
op over time. A knowledge base is needed, but so is experience in
the clinical care environment, because there are limits to what one
can learn in the classroom. As a general rule, it takes 2 to 3 years of
experience in the same job to function at a competent level. That's
why you need to constantly assess the growth of each staff member
by testing and retesting competencies in all aspects of her assigned
roles, including, among other job-specific focuses, immediate-use
sterilization, environmental cleaning, malignant hyperthermia
response, universal precautions, patient positioning, IV starts and
instrument sterilization.
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2 2 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • J U l y 2 0 1 6
Staffing
Ann Geier, MS, RN, CNOR, CASC
• PROVING GROUNDS Observe staff competencies real-time in actual clinical settings.