EDUCATION IS KEY TO IMPROVEMENT – ISSUE NO. 258

I recently had the pleasure of speaking in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, presenting my all day program called the "College of Clean." What is amazing is that the hospital I spoke at has what is called an educational day where the Operating Room and Medical Device Reprocessing Department bring in speakers for the staff. They only do emergency surgeries that day, and staff accordingly so that as many staff as possible can attend the all day educational programs. It is always held at the same time of the year, the second Friday of May, which is great for everybody. What is nice is that the schedule is adjusted so the two departments can send as many staff as possible. What a wonderful concept. This facility understands the importance of education and how hard it is to get staff to meetings, so they bring it to the hospital and make it easy for staff to attend. Coincidentally, a major healthcare system in Houston, Texas recently did something similar on a Saturday for their Sterile Processing staff, having an all day meeting for them to bring education to help them understand their vital role in patient care. Healthmark, just like these healthcare systems, believes that education is vital to improvement; the more we know about the who, what, where and why of our jobs, the better the care will be. Healthmark has many programs for supporting education. One of these is called Sterile Processing Dollars (SPDollars), and it helps medical facilities buy educational books and materials and pay for registrants' fees for various meetings. Recently, the IAHCSMM annual meeting was held in Columbus ,Ohio, and 13 people used SPDollars to pay for their registration to this meeting. Some say, "knowledge is power," but we believe the real power is when education and knowledge is shared.