Consultant important part of job description
Provide guidance within health care system
The role of internal consultant is a major part of most patient education manager’s jobs, and one that must be cultivated. "It is the most critical role," says Cezanne Garcia, MPH, CHES, manager of patient and family education services at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.
To meet the challenges of this role, PEMs must keep up to date on the research literature. When working with a team as an internal consultant on a patient education project, Garcia always advises them on evidence-based practices she gleans from the literature.
"I may work with a medical librarian, and she will do a literature search and give me 20 articles which I scan, selecting two or three. I try to distill key literature and resources for teams," she explains.
Patient education managers need to be resource brokers, says Garcia. Every week, she mails five to 10 articles or commercial patient education tools to key people within the organization for their review and to keep them abreast of what’s available.
Consulting often requires strong group facilitation skills and knowledge of various types of prioritization exercises, such as brainstorming, to engage and involve a planning group, says Garcia.
You have to be able to help various disciplines work together as a team, says Donette E. Lasher, MAT, patient and family education coordinator at York (PA) Health System. "The consulting role is to help team members not only think about their specific practice but to look at all the components of the patient’s experience through the health care system and bring their roles together," she explains.
In addition, a PEM must be able to advise teams on how to collect data in their area on patient education needs. This would include conducting a needs assessment, compiling the information, and guiding the team through the program development process, says Annette Mercurio, MPH, CHES, director of Health Education Services at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, CA.
Build relationships
To work well with others, it is important to build rapport within your organization. This entails showing interest in those who work around you and listening without criticizing in order to win their trust and respect, says Nell Kapeghian, MSN, RN, patient care services program director at Deborah Heart & Lung Center in Browns Mills, NJ. "Every organization is a little different in terms of their culture and tradition, and a patient education manager must learn how things are done within an organization," she says.
At Deborah, staff turnover is low, and many health care professionals have been in their positions for 20 years. "We have a culture here where we take our time when making changes. You must get buy-in before making changes," says Kapeghian.
To be a good consultant, you must have marketing skills, says Lasher. "You must market your service to health care professionals within your organization as something that is value-added and not just something that is more red tape and roadblocks to getting their project done," she explains.
Also, in working with others on projects, PEMs need to be skilled in contract negotiations, says Lasher. To act as a consultant, it is important to define your needs for information and what the limits and skills of your participation in the project will be.
It’s also important for others working on the project to define what their needs and expectations are. "Otherwise, you could have miscommunications where the patient education manager just ends up being a materials manager or doing the entire project and the front line person just tells him or her what to do. That isn’t much of a consulting relationship," says Lasher.
Whenever institutional initiatives are being developed that deal in some way with educating the patients, don’t wait to be invited on the team, advises Louise Villejo, MPH, CHES, director of education at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "Talk to the committee members and chair to see what they are doing, and tell them how you can support that initiative and get involved," she says.
Once involved, make sure you understand the project and its goals. When Villejo’s patient education department was asked to participate in a major initiative to get educational materials on-line, she made sure her staff understood what the overall strategic plan was. They took leadership in deciding how the on-line system should be designed and implemented.
Patient education managers often must prod clinicians into action, says Sharon Sweeting, MS, RD, LD, CDE, patient education coordinator at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. For example, when the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations in Oakbrook Terrace, IL, implemented pain management standards, Sweeting stimulated discussion in various hospital departments about how to address the standards through pain management classes or developing assessment tools.
Sweeting not only acts as a consultant on patient education regulatory requirements but also on age-specific competencies, such as teaching children vs. geriatric patients.
PEMs should be prepared to consult on all the nuances of patient education, says Kathy Ordelt, RN, patient and family education coordinator for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. This includes literacy levels of materials and how to provide education better and faster during the daily bedside delivery. PEMs can develop needed consulting skills by attending classes and conferences, as well as networking with colleagues.
Communication skills are perhaps the most important skills for consulting, she says. "I see patient education managers having a skills set that has nothing to do with our specific job duties. These include interacting with people, team building, coaching, rewarding, problem solving, organizational skills, advocacy, leadership, positive attitude, a sense of humor, and flexibility. Those kind of personality traits should be one of the things we work on developing, for they will help us get our job done," says Ordelt.
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