Educational Needs Assessment and Analysis of My Employment Place, Essay Example

Introduction

Assessment and analysis of educational, learning and training needs of employees in any place of employment is an important strategy in determining what kind, area or form of training is exactly needed by employees. This strategy helps to save resources, energy and time allocated for training because employees will only be subjected to the necessary and specific training. Lack of assessment and analysis of the educational or training needs of employees lead to misappropriation of resources, time and energy spend on unnecessary training (Schenk, 2004).

Type of institution and the nursing service/care provided

My place of employment is a nursing institution with various nursing departments responsible for provision of a variety of nursing services to patients from the surrounding community. Medical prescriptions, medical tests (diagnosis), treatments and admission of patients are among the nursing services offered by the institution. In short, the institution is a hospital and basically engaged in offering various medical needs to a variety of patients visiting the hospital. As an employee of this institution, I work in the admissions department as a nurse. My team is responsible for nursing admitted patients by providing them with care (ensuring that they get the necessary medical attention by providing them with whatever they need) and ensuring that they strictly adhere to the medical prescriptions while admitted in the hospital (Coetzee, 2006).

Volume of activity of the institution

As mentioned above, the institution is a busy place engaged in various medical and nursing services. For instance, the institution attends to over two hundred patients in a single day, some of which are attended to and allowed to go back home, while others are admitted in various wards. In my department, we attend to between fifty and one hundred admitted patients. This is the average number of admitted patients at any particular time. We ensure that the patents are well handled in terms of relating to them well, ensuring that they are attended to by doctors, ensuring that their requirements are available and strict following up on how they adhere to medical prescriptions. This is quite a large volume of activity in our department and an institution as a whole (Warnich, 2008).

Summary of the results of educational needs assessment and analysis

I selected a sample of ten employees from my representative group including five male and five female employees. I used questionnaires, interviews, checklists, observation and review of the institution’s documents to asses and analyze the educational needs. The data collected was as follows:

Most of the employees (90%) were in support of implementation of educational and training programs in the areas of improved patient handling, accurate medical prescriptions and development of good relations with patients. By analyzing the data collected, most of the sample employees (90%) together with the information retrieved from checklist and documents’ review indicated that employees were in need of training or learning in these areas so that they can record improved performance in service delivery to the patients. However, 1% of the employees sampled was not sure of the need for training and could not contribute fully to my assessment of the educational needs (this particular outcome can be attributed to lack of information on the importance of training and assessment of the training needs).

Identification of the highest priority educational need

According to the data collected, the highest educational priority need for the institution, especially in my department, is to provide training on how nurses can effectively handle patients and create a good relationship with them. Patients are the most vital and yet delicate customers of this profit making institution. The institution wants to offer them the best services and make them come back again whenever they need further medical assistance or attention. Therefore, the way in which the nurses will handle the patients will determine their satisfaction with the services offered. It is observed that most nurses fail to understand patients and their varying conditions thus leading to poor handling procedures employed (Schenk, 2004). With training in this area, nurses will be equipped with a diverse background and knowledge on varying patients received in the hospital and how they can be handled effectively without much misunderstanding. There are some cases where nurses need to understand the patients well and the conditions they are undergoing so that they can be able to attend to them and handle them in an ethical and acceptable manner. This can only be possible if the nurses will be subjected to a thorough training program on handling and relating to varying types of patients. This will enhance their service delivery and improve overall performance as well as the ultimate goals of the institution (Coetzee, 2006).

Institution’s forces

There are several institutional forces including those that are in favor and those against responding to educational needs of employees in the institution. ‘Budgetary constraints’ is among the opposing institutional forces towards response to educational needs. In this aspect, the budgetary department claims that some of the training resources and other expenses are expensive and not allocated in the budget, thus lack of enough funds to enhance a response to the training needs. Some of the staff members are also constraints to the response to the training needs. For them, they think that training is a waste of time, energy and resources. Their resistance to accept and endorse the need for training is based on ignorance and lack of understanding of the benefits associated with current educational needs (Castley, 2009). On the other hand, majority of the institutional forces are in favor of a prompt response to the training and educational needs of employees. Majority of the staff member have demonstrated a positive reception of the idea and support the response to attend to the educational needs of employees. The management on the other hand has also endorsed the idea terming it as a strategy to enhance improved service delivery by nurses and achieve the goals of the institution as a whole. In general, the institutional supporting forces outweigh the forces against the move to respond to the educational needs in the institution (Warnich, 2008).

The step to respond to the educational needs identified as highest priority

Based on the existing structure of the institution, the proposal will be forwarded to the management for approval. After approval, the management will get in touch with the finance department to squeeze the program in the budget even if it will mean applying opportunity cost strategy. A qualified and experienced team of trainers in these particular areas will be identified or outsourced after which a date will be set for implementation and final commencement of the training program to attend to the educational needs identified as highest priority (Coetzee, 2006).

Conclusion

The identified educational needs of the institution are very vital to the performance of the employees, especially nurses. Although some constraints exits in responding to the identified needs, the institution is likely to benefit if these educational needs are well attended to by qualified and experienced team of trainers/educators.

References

Castley, R. (2009). The sectoral approach to the assessment of skills needs and training requirements. International Journal of Manpower, 17(1), 56-68.

Coetzee, M. (2006). Short course in Skills Development Facilitation. Pretoria: University of South Africa.

Schenk, H. (2004). Survey of needs in continuing education of RNs in Wisconsin. Journal of continuing education in nursing, 20(5), 218-221.

Warnich, S. (2008). Human Resource Management in nursing. Cornwall: Thomson Learning.