Stir up a family feud’ to teach ethics
Entire staff benefits from agency’s ethics game plan
It’s an especially hard task to teach employees about ethics and advance medical directives when there’s little time and there are dozens of people to instruct.
"You see people falling asleep in inservices where someone’s in front of the classroom, just talking," says Marty Vincent, RN, C, competency and infection control coordinator for Continue Care Home Health of Greenville, MS.
Vincent was determined not to let this become her problem when she created an inservice for 50 to 70 people about ethical practices, the patient bill of rights, advance directives, and fraud and abuse.
She discovered that ethical information can be taught in a way that both educates and entertains if education managers divide staff into two groups and pit them against each other in a "Family Feud"-type game.
"The philosophy that learning has to be rigid and take place in a classroom atmosphere is an old-fashioned idea," Vincent adds. "Learning can be fun, and most people will take more in and learn it better if it is."
Continue Care Home Health is a full-service agency with 12 offices in Mississippi, serving mostly the northwest portion of the state. The agency also has six agencies in Louisiana, Texas, and Colorado.
Vincent chose the Family Feud game format because it requires more than a dozen people to stand up at one time, which keeps people moving and alert. Also, the game requires each contestant to answer a question, so no one can coast.
"There’s never enough time for a post-test," Vincent says. "The game moves so quickly that the time goes by fast and we often run over time. But we don’t have any complaints."
Here’s how Vincent suggests setting up the game:
1. Place a divider and overhead projector at the front of the room.
On either side of the project are places for employees to stand as they compete with one another. The projector is used to show the questions to the audience, although the answers are kept covered with strips of paper that can be pulled off, one at a time.
Vincent has one person stand at the projector and pull off the strips of paper to reveal the correct answer when a team has gotten it right. This way, everyone in the audience can see and hear the correct answer.
2. Divide the class into an even number of groups consisting of 6 to 11 people and name each team after a color.
Vincent would call out for two teams to come up to the front to stand on either side of the projector. "We’d have them introduce themselves to the entire group," she says.
"Soon, you’ll see the audience forming sides, and they start to cheer them on," she says. "You’re kind of on the edge of your chair for the group you want to win."
3. Make score cards, numbering them from one to 10, and give prizes to each team that wins.
Teams have to answer 10 questions correctly, earning 10 points in order to win. Someone will need to keep score for each team.
Vincent gives out candy or pens or other simple, inexpensive items as prizes.
4. Keep the questions simple enough that they can be answered quickly.
Continue Care Home Health had started with a three-hour inservice, but that tied up too much of the staff’s time, so Vincent cut the game and inservice to 1.5 hours by simplifying the questions. (See sample Family Feud questions, p. 111.)
She avoided questions that required an essay type answer, such as "What would you do if you were in this ethical dilemma?" And instead, she relied on questions that had explicit answers.
Vincent gives as an example of the question, "The durable power of attorney can be written by whom?"
"They’ll say, the patient, the attorney,’ and you buzz them wrong answer," Vincent says. "The correct answer is Anyone the patient chooses.’"
Vincent used a child’s bullhorn and a key chain as the buzzer to indicate when someone was right or wrong with an answer.
5. Set up the rules in the tradition of the television Family Feud game.
First, one member of the team would try to answer the question. If that person was incorrect, then the question would bounce over to the other team. If that person also missed it, then the first team could brainstorm to come up with the answer.
For the second question, the second person in line would have a shot at answering it, and so forth until everyone has had at least one turn alone.
"It stimulates the employee to think about these things, and it’s amazing what they will come up with," Vincent says. "We never make them feel wrong. We go on with the question, saying things like, That would be right if it was with this or that.’"
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