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Veterinary Practice News Editorial Blog:
Thursday, February 18, 2010
CE: Teachable Moments Beyond the Event
By Katherine Dobbs, RVT, CVPM, PHR
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So here I am at the Western Veterinary Conference in Las Vegas. It’s my first time at WVC, although I’ve been to Vegas a few times. The first time was with my family of origin many years ago, and my mom proceeded to show us her favorite lucky slot machine at each casino we visited … then she found out they rotate the machines, and her luck ran out. (It was probably a psychological effect!)
Apparently good fortune has found a new crowd, the front office team members of our veterinary practices. I began my speaking engagement with a few topics aimed at the front office, and was pleased to see that at least 1/3 of the audience was in fact working the front office position. This is impressive, as typically the front office is the least funded members of the team when it comes to CE benefits. Yet we all know how invaluable they are to the success of the practice! So it was inspiring to see so many of them in the crowd. Then I asked how many of them had to go back to their practice and teach others about the topics they heard … many raised their hands.
In order for the practice to benefit from having a CE budget, there has to be new information that is brought back to the team. For this to happen on a consistent basis, there needs to be a process in place and an agreement between the practice and the team member headed to the CE event. Here’s the system I developed, in the hopes that it will help other practices.
We rotated people to send to the larger conferences, so they all got a chance to get this opportunity. Then when the person and event was selected, we looked at the schedule of lectures. The employee would pick several they wanted to attend, and I as their manager would pick others that I wanted them to attend, with a focus on what information I wanted them to bring back to the team. There would also be several hours of “down time” for them to visit the exhibit hall and yes, even relax and have a little fun. Then an agreement, a CE Contract if you will, was signed by both of us. The mandatory lectures were listed, and the follow-up expectations were spelled out. Typically this was a presentation for the rest of the team, to be performed within 30 days of returning from the conference.
Now there are some people who will absolutely not get up in front of others to teach. I’ve heard that public speaking is the #1 fear, while death is actually #3 … kinda sad that we fear death less than public speaking, but okay I’ll admit it’s a fear for some of us. So for that person who would rather die than speak, we had an alternative teaching method. They would write a paper of considerable length, say 2-3 pages at minimum, and they would create a quiz of 10-20 questions to follow their information. This would fulfill their requirement to teach, and build in accountability that the team received the training based on their passing grade.
However you set it up in your practice, just remember that CE should go way beyond teaching that one person sitting in the audience … the entire practice team should benefit from this investment in CE. <HOME>
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