| | SEPTEMBER 20249Working in higher education and a medical setting has emphasized the importance of applying adult learning theory to design interventions that foster collaborative learning experiencesThe question is, how do you develop a strong continuing professional development program that contributes to the success of a higher education/medical institution? We all know that if interventions are designed to instill the institution's cultural values and core institutional responsibilities while addressing the needs of the team/learners, we are headed in the right direction. The learner's motivation, drive to learn, and dedication make an institution successful. These learners are seeking to improve so they can optimize their careers and increase productivity at the same time. A successful continuing medical education program is to develop a program that meets the institution's mission and goals. The program has to have the ability to identify a need with the use of need assessment tools, develop a good educational intervention to address the identified need with measurable objectives at hand, and the educational design of the intervention will create an educational experience aligned to the identified objectives. We then evaluate the overall understanding of the learners by assessing the intervention effectiveness and assessing for expected outcomes to verify that we are delivering education that meets or exceeds goals. In the journey towards enhancing professional development, we encounter various barriers, including financial constraints, resistance to change, and lack of motivation. Barriers may include financial constraints, a requirement for more comprehensive information to facilitate change, the necessity for repeated exposure to educational content before change can occur, the perception of the proposed change as overly complex, learner motivation challenges, and instances where the healthcare team is not fully committed to the educational intervention. To address these challenges, it's essential to incorporate strategies such as interactive staff meetings, reminders, notices, and innovative educational interventions. For instance, we implemented an educational intervention focused on burnout and compassion fatigue, followed by a self-care plan to reinforce learning. The educational intervention was designed to educate the team on differences, warning signs, and symptoms of burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress. After six weeks of the educational intervention, a self-care plan was available to the learners to reinforce the learning and address the challenge that the content presented needed to be reinforced in order to make a change. The sessions consisted of topics such as exercise, work-life balance, grief, and a wellness recovery action plan. Obtaining joint accreditation has been a transformative achievement for our institution. It positions us as a strategic partner in healthcare improvement initiatives and underscores our commitment to continuing education and healthcare excellence. This accreditation aligns perfectly with our institution's mission, emphasizing the importance of collaborative healthcare professionals in advancing patient care and knowledge. Our institution's mission "is to enrich the lives of others by educating students to become collaborative health care professionals, providing excellent patient care and advancing knowledge through innovative research." Our mission statement in itself required us to obtain joint accreditation. This helps us to keep our dedication to teaching and training the next generation of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, researchers, and healthcare professionals. Healthcare providers of different professions and researchers come together to identify practice gaps, and the learners need to plan accredited continuing education and training that creates a change in competence, performance, and/or patient outcome.
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