Solutions

Solutions powered by
Learn More.
Frame 586 (1)

Quality Manager formerly known as abaqis®

Mitigate risk and elevate your quality of care. Improving both clinical and business outcomes starts with a smarter, more integrated approach to regulatory training, continuing education and quality management.

Learn More

NEW TO THE STORE

hStream Content Marketplace

Connecting you to the Best Content. Access to 75 Partners and 35,000+ Courses in our Industry-Leading Marketplace. Streamline content purchasing, updates, hosting and connectivity for your organizational needs.

NurseGrid Learn

Online store for Clinical Learners. Individual CE Credit and industry products for Clinical Learners are now available through NurseGrid Learn (Beta). Explore our robust collection of courses that provides an unparalleled level of flexibility and choice.

DEA MATE Opioid and Substance Use for Practitioners

Meet the DEA's new requirement under the Medication Access and Training Expansion (MATE) Act in an online and self-paced 8-hour DEA MATE Act course specifically designed for practitioners, including Physicians, PAs, NPs, Pharmacists, Dentists and others.

LATEST & POPULAR

BLOG

Join Us at Thrive24: The Ultimate HealthStream Credentialing User Group Conference!
BLOG

Gen Z Enters the Workforce: How Healthcare Can Adapt Training Programs for the Next Generation
BLOG

Telehealth: From Pandemic Tool to Preferred Option
On-Demand Webinar

State of the Industry: What’s Next for Healthcare Quality & Safety in 2024?
CUSTOMER STORY

Quantifiable results highlight switch to jane®
ARTICLE

10 Trends for 2024: Absorbing New Technology, Facing New Realities, and Solving Old Problems

< HealthStream Resources

Supporting Leader Development in Healthcare

April 1, 2021
April 1, 2021

This blog post is taken from a recent Webinar featuring Christine Buell, director of leadership development for Avera Health in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

My personal leadership goal is to create an environment where leaders can effectively proclaim they can lead themselves, their teams, and Avera Health. We design and provide a variety of growth opportunities for our employees, deploying a blend of learning approaches and standardized leadership processes.

Lay the Foundation

Before embarking on an initiative of this magnitude, it’s extremely important to lay the foundation for your efforts. A big part of this is getting leadership buy-in. Everything we do must align with our mission, values, and strategic plan. Increasing retention is a primary strategic initiative for our organization. Our goal is to increase our current rate of retention by 10%.

Define Targets

We target three groups in our efforts to support retention and succession: aspiring leaders, rising nurse leaders, and new leaders. For new leaders, we have a nine-month curriculum, required as part of their leadership orientation. For our current leaders, we offer the Avera Day of Development twice each year, emphasizing a different leadership core competency at each session. We also offer a voluntary leadership challenge, which commits individuals to accumulating 60 hours of development over the course of a calendar year.

To sustain an initiative this large, we support the programs in three ways: a learning council, team coaches, and an online learning platform.

The Learning Council

The Avera Learning Council includes five to ten leaders in each of our six regional facilities. Participation is voluntary, but these individuals must be in tune with their own leadership development and be willing to see the best in others. We meet with these folks on a quarterly basis. The learning council helps us brainstorm ways to execute curriculum and address any challenges.

Coaches

Team coaches help us connect our frontline leaders directly to the programs. A team coach can be a clinical or a non-clinical leader who serves as a director, a vice president, or a supervisor. Each is assigned a group of participants, and the coaches attend the programs with them. They also provide input on curriculum and serve as advisers.  Our team coach approach has been incredibly effective as a means of creating buy-in. One of our team coaches is the chief nursing officer of our largest facility, and we couldn’t ask for a better team coach and advocate. We also invite past graduates of our program to be mentors to new participants.

Online Learning Platform

The Avera Learning Center platform is essentially HealthStream’s My Connections page, where we’ve created a leadership development node, accessible only to leaders and participants. The curriculum for each program resides on this node, making it very easy to find resources, information, and communications.

Leadership development has proven to be beneficial to retention and leader succession, but it has also served to engage our current leaders with the leaders of tomorrow, ensuring our mission will continue.

For more from Christine, click here.