Training Tips Blog

When I was at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, we spent a lot of time retooling the on boarding process and the new employee orientation sessions. We worked with HR, Training and OD and the operational and clinical managers to really get the message out about what CHOP was like culturally and what was expected of people in a pediatric environment. This was very important for new nurses coming on board right out of nursing school. We invested heavily in the overall orientation process, both in the global new orientation for the hospital and for individual departments.

We partnered with senior leadership to get them to come to the sessions and truly send the message out about the culture and their own expectations of new employees working in this crazy, intense and passionate environment.

Another example of getting the message out about hospital culture and expectations, was partnering with a group called the “family faculty” in new employee orientation. These were a group of mothers who worked for the hospital, generally part-time. They were mothers of kids who had long term illnesses. Their role in our hospital was to give presentations to employees and other families about both the good and bad service experiences they had in the hospital.

 

They were honest and true about what it is like to have a terminally ill child and how to navigate through the crazy health care system. These were very powerful messages that these mothers sent to the new employees and really helped them understand what the expectations would be like in working for a children’s hospital, meaning that expectations would be very high.