It has been a while since I
have been in a blog writing mood. Too
many things happening. Over the next
short while I expect we will be much more active. My most recent experience has been in
teaching Quality Management to laboratorians of all professions as part of our university's Continuing Professional Development program
Our Virtual
Classroom On-Line Education (VCOLE) course has been growing rapidly, to now
almost double our enrolment of 2015.
This was in interesting lesson for me because I have always been
resistant to allowing the course to get larger than 25 participants because I
thought that too many people would create chaos in the classroom
discussions. I was convinced to be more
open, and this year we had over 40 people, with physicians, technologists,
quality managers, and administrators from multiple countries, and I was amazed
at how well it worked. Yes, there were
some comments on overcrowded discussion sites, but we learned how to fix that,
and it indeed worked excellently. The
participants really seemed to enjoy the course, and I know that their course
colleagues will continue to be an important contact source for the participants
as they develop their own contact networks.
It took a little bravery on my side, some risk/benefit analysis, and we
came out with a success.
In a similar vein, we were
approached by an international health organization to see if we were interested
in taking our course to South East Asia to deliver the course for an additional
26 Quality Managers and Laboratory Managers.
The challenge was that most of the group spoke little English and their
internet access was usually unstable. So
with a little head scratching and some Deming-like Planning, we figured out to
deliver the course not on-line, but on-site with the assist of some
translators. Rather than run the course
for a continuous 21 weeks, as the current on-line course runs, we had to adapt
the schedule to allow people to come together from across the country in a
single place without disrupting their work.
(Also if I had decided to go to leave Canada for 21 weeks, I suspect my
wife would have not been pleased). So we
settled on 1 week every six months, with continuity plans built in. That meant maintaining the content of the
on-line course, but adapting it to 3 very intensive weeks that included
content, presentations, discussion, assignments, quizzes and a final exam.
As with every plan it needed
some tweaking along the way (call that Plan-Do-Study-Act) but it was amazing
how well it came together. The group
stayed intact, their performance evolved to a very productive point, and their
reviews at the end were in the range of 88% high level success.
All it took was a little
innovation, creativity, planning and impetus, but I suspect that you would all
say that if every plan was put together with the same tools, the outcome would
be fairly predictable.
This has been a very busy time
for all our mentors and staff, and for me.
And it took a lot of background administration to bring it all together
but this is what I learned:
- Health organizations around the world are increasingly aware to the Costs associated with Poor Quality.
- The appetite for Quality Management training in the laboratory area continues to grow.
- People want the knowledge
- Their institutions want the knowledge
- The public demands the knowledge.
- More and more institutions are prepared to support their staff participating in courses that are designed to deliver.
- Quality Management courses can and should be delivered in a variety of appropriate organizations and institutions, including universities.
- The
impact of the Quality education impacts the people that take the course, their
staff, their customers, their family members, their organizations and institutions
and public health.
- The sharing of knowledge is profoundly positive and enriching on all sides.
So now we have one course in
Laboratory Quality Management that is ready to go in two formats, both on-line
and on-site. We know there is an audience
and with two proven approaches, we are ready to continue on.
Burn-out is NOT an option.
For more information visit:
www.POLQM.ca
