Ambulatory RN/Patient Care Coordinator Onboarding Program
When staff feel empowered and prepared to perform at their best, patients receive the ultimate benefit. By providing a structured and comprehensive onboarding experience for ambulatory RNs and PCCs, Stanford Health Care ensures that staff feel valued and equipped to be successful in their new roles.
The RN/PCC Ambulatory Onboarding Program is a 3-week standardized onboarding curriculum for newly hired ambulatory nurses (RNs) and Patient Care Coordinators (PCC) and is an option for contracted employees, interdisciplinary staff, and clinic leaders to attend as well.
The curriculum utilizes a variety of teaching methods that is intentionally distributed throughout the three weeks allowing for clinical application of learned skills when orienting in clinic. The topics covered include roles and responsibilities, scope of practice, support services, service recovery, RN transition to the outpatient setting, Epic Inbasket management, interprofessional collaboration, role-specific standard work and a review of relevant policies and procedures.
Successful Outcomes:
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In 2022, 311 staff were onboarded through the Ambulatory RN/PCC Onboarding Program. This included 122 RNs, 167 PCCs, and 22 additional attendees. Since its inception, the program has onboarded a total of 593 attendees.
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Due to the creation of this standardized onboarding program for ambulatory care, staff turn-over rates decreased from 22% to 3%.
The RN/PCC Ambulatory Onboarding Program was created in response to a FY2018 Engagement and Wellness Goal to decrease staff turnover, especially among new hires. A root cause analysis identified a need for standardized onboarding for new employees in ambulatory care. The Ambulatory RN/PCC Onboarding Program launched in September 2020 with a focus on providing comprehensive onboarding education for RNs and PCCs in all service lines. The first Ambulatory Onboarding cohort in 2020 consisted of three staff members and progressively increased to 10-15 attendees monthly. In 2022, the program’s monthly attendance ranged from 25-40 staff monthly.
Submitted by Kiana Scott, MSN, RN, CCRN-CSC, CNML -Nursing Professional Development Specialist, Center for Education and Professional Development
Leadership and Management Academy (LAMA)
The Leadership and Management Academy (LAMA) is a structured, competency-based program designed to facilitate role transition for mid-level, interprofessional leaders. LAMA is designed to promote transformational leadership development by building interprofessional collaborative networks and creating an environment in which leaders support others to create change. Jean Watson’s Theory of Caring Science provides the theoretical framework for the program and an opportunity for mid-level leaders to approach their role from the lens of caring leadership.
LAMA was developed after consultation with and input from various stake holders in the organization. The LAMA program is based upon competencies taken from the American College of Health Care Executives (ACHE), Harvard Business Review (HBR), and the American Organization for Nurse Leaders: Nurse Manager Competencies (AONL). A crosswalk of these competencies was done and serves as a guide for content development.
The AONL learning domain framework was used to structure the curriculum into 3 divisions - The Leader Within, which focuses the participants on self-awareness; The Art of Leading the People, which covers working with others and managing teams and direct reports; and Managing the Business, the more commonly referenced management skills, like budgeting and strategic planning.
The curriculum utilizes a novel approach incorporating the Theory of Caring Science, Brene Brown’s Daring Leadership work and Kennedy, LeClerc & Campis’ Human-Centered Leadership concepts. Because of LAMA’s focus on self-awareness, which is foundational to both Human-Centered Leadership and Brown’s leadership work, we require LAMA participants complete a personal SWOT analysis. Their SWOT, together with their individual Stand-Out strengths help drive and inform their leadership journey.
An important part of LAMA is the mandatory project component. LAMA attendees are required to either create a project centered on their own leader development or their interaction with their teams and direct reports. The LAMA project highlights two of the three AONL learning domains – The Leader Within and The Art of Leading People. Projects are presented to peers and managers at graduation.
Five cohorts have completed the program (98 participants) and we are mid-way through cohort 6.
Outcome measurements are collected via 4 tools – Stanford Healthcare turnover and promotion data, Leadership Confidence scale, Stanford Professional Fulfillment Index, and Watson’s Caritas Leader Self-Rating Score (added for cohort 6). Evaluations are collected pre, immediately post and 3 months after LAMA participation.
At this time, data are available for cohorts 1-4. To date, 96% of LAMA graduates remain employed at Stanford Healthcare. Of these, 34% were promoted following LAMA completion.
Data show increased self-reports of leadership confidence and understanding of Stanford’s organizational structure, finance and strategic planning, communication, leading teams, and the role of Implicit Bias in Healthcare.
Submitted by: Carole Wilson MPH, MS, RN, NPD-BC, CNS, FACHE
Nursing Professional Development Specialist
Mojgan Haririfar, PhD, RN, FNP-BC, NPD-BC, CCTC Caritas Coach®
Nursing Professional Development Specialist
For over the past 15 years, Stanford’s Transformation Scholarship has been available to nurses who are seeking to elevate their practice. Employees can receive up to $5,000 per year for education and professional development purposes. In the past, nurses have used this scholarship to enhance their exemplary professional practice and excel in BSN, MSN, MBA, DNP, and PhD programs, as well as advanced nursing specialty degrees and certifications.
The Stanford Health Care (SHC) Nursing Mentorship Program is an opportunity for nurses in any role to engage in a mentoring relationship with another nurse to foster working relationships, promote competence and confidence, advance professional development, achieve individual personal and professional career goals, increase job satisfaction and retention. The SHC Nursing Mentorship Program aligns the nurses’ goals with mentors that have already achieved those goals to streamline efforts at reaching a higher satisfaction within their professional nursing journey, build a culture that supports mentorship, and promote succession planning.
A mentor is a seasoned professional who has advanced job-related experience, accomplishments that the mentee is seeking to achieve, knowledge of the organization, a positive attitude, and excellent communication skills.
SHC Nursing Program’s philosophy is to foster a reciprocal learning relationship in which a mentor and mentee agree to a partnership where they will work collaboratively toward achievement of mutually defined goals that will develop a mentee’s skills, abilities, knowledge, and/or thinking.
With this philosophy, SHC Nursing Program was designed to align with SHC’s organizational strategic plan, professional practice model, and caring science theory to exceed national and global standards. The SHC Nursing Program is a long-lasting relationship-oriented program that develop nurses not only for their current role, but also for their future roles in the nursing profession.
Why fit in when you can stand out?
The StandOut strengths platform helps participants hone in on personal strengths, especially each person's top two strengths. This platform is a powerful tool that allows SHC nurses and interprofessionals to connect, build upon their strengths, and accelerate SHC's collective performance as a team and as a vibrant and engaged organization. Read more about this employee engagement tool here.