Video made in-house to educate staff on falls
Finding a new way to educate employees about fall prevention is a big challenge because, though the topic is important, it can be hard to keep people's attention. One facility found that an educational video starring its own employees and presented with a bit of humor effectively delivers the necessary information
Beginning Oct. 1, 2012, ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) will be required to submit data on five quality measures, including patient falls, to avoid a payment adjustment in 2014.
The effort at Long Beach (CA) Memorial Medical Center began about two years ago when leaders were seeking a way to improve education efforts and comply with the National Patient Safety Goal on fall prevention, explains Miriam Wedemeyer, OTR/L, JD, ergonomics program director at the hospital, part of MemorialCare Health System (MHS).
"To deal with this issue, our ergonomics team formed a consortium of representatives from adult and pediatric nursing, Occupational Medical Services, the Patient Safety Committee, and adult and pediatric rehabilitation therapies," Wedemeyer says. "After some discussion about how to get people's attention and what we had already done in the past, we knew the ultimate solution was a video."
In preparation, the team members developed a storyboard presentation and piloted it at the hospital's next nursing skills education fair. From there, they located a professional production company that worked closely with the consortium to write the script, film, edit, and produce the video."The consortium itself was cohesive, and ideas flowed freely. Each constituency brought its own expertise to the table," Wedemeyer says.
The project team determined the necessary criteria for a successful training video:
- evidence-based;
- entertaining and interesting;
- simple and practical;
- brief: preferably 5 and no more than 10 minutes;
- multiple scenarios;
- repeatable by multiple trainers to reach all employees;
- consistent message, no matter who presents it and when.
Six month investment of time
From concept to finished product, the project took six months, including securing funding. The video production was funded by grants from the Memorial Medical Center Foundations. Consortium members contributed time as part of their jobs. (See the story, below, for the key information presented in the video.)
Casting was one of the most important tasks, Wedemeyer says. The consortium wanted to use hospital employees instead of professional actors for two reasons, she explains. First, employees would give the video more of a realistic feel and make it specific to the facility rather than looking like an off-the-shelf education video.
The second reason was that the employees watching the video could see their friends and colleagues in the video, which would keep them interested and entertained, especially in the more comedic moments. (See the story, below, for more on the comedic element.) "We wanted as many employees as possible from every one of our six hospital campuses in Los Angeles and Orange counties in the MemorialCare Health System," Wedemeyer says. "They had to be believable, yet entertaining in their roles."
The consortium also wanted a corporate executive to open and close the video, to give it credibility. MHS Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Tammie Brailsford, RN, stepped in.
The video shoot took place over two days in an unoccupied patient room and other non-patient locations.
Prior to release, each constituency previewed the video and approved the content. To release the video, Brailsford encouraged the consortium to put on a movie premiere, complete with popcorn. "It became a celebration for the entire enterprise," Wedemeyer says. "Hundreds of employees attended the premiere, where we staged a ceremony for comical awards with statuettes and short acceptance speeches."
The video is made available on the MHS intranet and is frequently used for nursing education. Wedemeyer says it has been a huge success. The keys to the success of the project were the inclusion of multiple constituencies, sponsorship by C-suite executives, and serving up serious material with a "spoonful of humor," she says.
"More than a year later, I still get compliments from employees on how great the video is and that it has impacted their knowledge and implementation of fall prevention procedures and activities," Wedemeyer says. "Its light-hearted nature, especially when the audience knows the players, makes it a highly effective teaching tool."
Hospital identifies topics for falls video While planning its in-house education video on fall prevention, project members at Long Beach (CA) Memorial Medical Center, developed a list of topics to include and criteria for effective training. These were the important topics and messages they wanted to include:
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Humor helps get the message across No one wants to sit through another boring education video, so Long Beach (CA) Memorial Medical Center decided to lighten things up with their fall prevention video. The comedy woven into the educational elements keeps the viewer's attention, explains Miriam Wedemeyer, OTR/L, JD, ergonomics program director at the hospital. "We knew we wanted it to be comedic, because people are inundated with really serious information. Normally when you put on a video, people immediately go to sleep," she says. "We needed to catch their attention with something that was interesting and entertaining even as we were presenting important messages about fall prevention." With a topic as serious as falls and the potential injuries, the team at first wondered how they could make anything about the video funny. But then they realized that the serious information could be portrayed with a light touch simply by giving the cast the leeway to be silly and goofy in the way they portrayed some scenes, along with some props, Wedemeyer says. The fact that viewers know the actors makes it much funnier than if a stranger were performing, she says. Several scenes in the movie portray fall hazards in the healthcare environment. They point out to the viewer what is wrong in the scenario, such as cords left exposed in the patient room or bed rails left down. A patient fall is portrayed to show how the hazards led to the fall, and then the scene is shown again with the employee responding appropriately to eliminate the hazards. Another key part of the video illustrates what the caregiver should do during a fall. Long Beach teaches its employees to facilitate a controlled fall, which allows the patient to slide down the caregiver's leg, rather than trying to hold up the patient. Attempting to hold up the patient puts the caregiver at risk, Wedemeyer says. "We intended this for nurses and other caregivers, but one of the things I'm most proud of is that others have seen the video and learned some of these important techniques," she says. |
Finding a new way to educate employees about fall prevention is a big challenge because, though the topic is important, it can be hard to keep people's attention.
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