Cultivate Your Garden: Sowing Seeds for Leadership – A Professional Development Lead Program

Team-based organizations rely on leaders throughout the organization to champion and execute new ways of working to reflect best standard practice. Professional development and cultivation of effective collaboration with leadership in health care can be challenging. Our education team noticed a challenge in this area and invested time and investigated ways we could offer support. After a gap analysis was completed, lack of educational and professional development support for informal leaders across all departments was identified. The specific needs identified were cultivation of peer accountability, workplace conflict resolution, and increased competence and adherence to best practice standards. The ambulatory care lead program was designed to close gaps through a comprehensive program hosted by the education department.

Clinical and non-clinical (i.e., front desk) lead roles exist within the organization. A platform to provide leadership education and a dedicated, ongoing forum for network lead collaboration and discussion of current clinic topics was created. The development of the program was initiated by creating curriculum for an evidenced-based leadership course. This 2-hour virtual course is made available to all current and new staff members who hold the lead title. A validation process has also been implemented to evaluate skill competency and measurement of meeting course objectives. Finally, a virtual 1-hour forum hosted on a monthly cadence is offered for all lead roles to provide ongoing professional development education and an opportunity to discuss new workflows and challenges.

The methodology for this evidence-based project includes both qualitative and quantitative components stemming from a PICO framework. The identified gaps in leadership educational support were chosen through qualitative reports from clinic leadership throughout the departments as well as the quantitative data reported through an internal education request tracking system and an annual learning needs assessment. Both provide numerical data categorized by system and network specific requests through the ambulatory care departments within the organization. Inconsistent workflows were identified as the major focus of the problem as reflected in the analysis of data within the tracker. Development of a program that would support lead roles to guide and exemplify best practice standards became the focus of implementation. The methods of evaluation are in process as this program is still in the initial implementation phase.

Comparison of pre- and post-implementation data is currently being processed to assess effectiveness. Our team has been utilizing the education tracker to provide quantitative data in other projects and has proven to be reliable. Our methods for evaluation will include a survey obtained at the end of each course and at each lead forum to gather data on our goals and objectives as well as leadership testimonials.

In cultivating an environment of professional development and leadership support for the lead roles in all departments, we have preliminary data that shows positive impact for staff and ultimately for patient care. We anticipate that data will continue to show goal outcomes of consistent workflows that align with best standards of practice, increased peer-to-peer accountability and decreased unresolved workplace conflict.